248 
FOREST AND STREAM 
June, 1921 
tween Painted Woods and Fort Berth- 
old and again further up the river. 
Old Indians confirm this statement and 
add more to it. They say that from 
the year 1864 onward till after the Sit- 
ting Bull-Custer battle they — the 
Western Sioux Indians — kept the buf- 
falo herded back into Montana or the 
extreme western part of the present 
North Dakota. This statement, 
strange as it may seem, is confirmed by 
numerous white frontiersmen. 
And this fact, caught in the very act, 
suggests to me that European cattle 
may have first been tamed and domes- 
ticated in a similar way, that is, by a 
tribe or group of people herding them 
west of the Missouri River and east of 
this Indian herd line, except a very few 
that occasionally slipped through the 
herd line and were not followed by In- 
dians and killed for food. But from 
1875 on, large numbers of buffalo were 
sometimes found in the north country 
which was beyond this Indian herd line, 
and some of them wandered as far East 
as the Turtle Mountains country. 
T HE buffalo herds that crossed the 
Missouri in the late summer of 
1879 or 1880, and those that drift- 
ed east from Montana after the Custer 
fight mingled together in the territory 
west of the Missouri River, and for 
tention given to the buffalo by the 
Western Sioux Indians, the buffalo 
that had thus increased in numbers 
came freely eastward and seemed, at 
times, almost to fill the plains country 
west of the Missouri River in North 
Dakota. In old times Indians never 
ruthlessly slaughtered buffalo, or other 
animals. They used what was neces- 
sary and preserved the rest. The buf- 
falo were the Indians’ cattle. 
The Western Sioux Indians regarded 
buffalo stealing about as a Dakota cat- 
tle-rancher regards cattle stealing — as 
a crime deserving death. This buffalo 
stealing by white men in the Dakotas 
was many times more the cause of 
trouble with the Sioux than all the gold 
in the Black Hills. I know this from 
hearing old Indians freely talk among 
themselves. That the trouble was 
chiefly caused by the Black Hills gold 
is an erroneous notion of the matter 
originated by white men. This notion 
has become fixed in written history, but 
it is incorrect. 
One of the few survivors of a great race 
into territory where they were safe 
from depredation by enemies. Old In- 
dians say, and other evidence shows 
that these Sioux Indians extended their 
herd line as far north only as the Kill- 
deer Mountains — never called Killdeer 
Mountains by the Sioux and to the 
point on the Missouri River just north 
of these mountains. Meanwhile the 
buffalo, now quite safe from ruthless 
depredation by white men, increased 
greatly in numbers, and in the sum- 
mer of 1875 many of these buffalo 
crossed the Missouri from the south 
side to the north side — from the pres- 
ent McKenzie County to the present 
Williams County and Mountrail Coun- 
ty — and thus escaping the Indian hero 
line they roamed up and down the 
Missouri, often swimming the river 
forth and back and going as far down 
river as Painted Woods, 60 miles up 
river from Bismarck, N. D. 
All white frontiersmen know well 
that from 1864 onward till after th< 
Sitting Bull-Custer battle no buffalo 
were to be found on the vast plains 
three years after 1879 there were so 
many buffalo in that country that only 
a few thoughtful men supposed that a 
time would ever come when buffalo 
hides could not be had in plenty. This 
was the time of the buffalo skinner’s 
harvest in the north. In the winter of 
1881, in the village — now city — of Dick- 
inson, N. D., there was a whole block 
of land full of buffalo hides corded up 
as high as a man could reach from a 
wagon, and yet in 1885, it was hardly 
possible anywhere to purchase a buf- 
falo hide. 
The last buffalo hunts when large 
numbers were killed took place in the 
summer of 1883. John C. Leach — now 
living in Solen, N. D., and one of the 
County Commissioners — was with the 
Indians in what was probably the last 
buffalo hunt of large proportions — in 
1883. In 1882 there was a great kill- 
ing of buffalo by Sioux Indians in 
which Major McLaughlin, then agent 
for the Standing Rock Sioux, took part. 
After the Sitting Bull-Custer battle, 
which was the end of this careful at- 
Further Notes on the Great Multitude 
of Buffalo that existed on the Western 
Plains in earlier days. 
By GEO. BIRD GRINNELL 
T HE large numbers of buffalo in old 
days have been told of by early 
writers so often that it seems 
hardly worth while to refer to them 
again. Nevertheless, as an example of 
the numbers which were together in 
the very last years of the existence of 
the wild species on the plains an ac- 
count given me by my long time friend, 
Howard Eaton, of Wolf, Wyoming, is 
worth recording. It confirms and has 
a distinct bearing on Dr. Beede’s refer- 
ence to . the abundance of buffalo west 
of the Missouri River after 1879. It is 
well known that the buffalo disappeared 
from the plains after the year 1883. 
This disappearance was as general as 
it was sudden, though it was not actual- 
ly complete in the north. A few buffalo 
remained in the plains country of cen- 
tral Montana on the heads of Porcu- 
pine and Dry Fork, and it was here in 
fact that some specimens were secured 
by a collector for the U. S. National 
Museum. 
For a number of years after the ex- 
peditions by Homaday and by the late 
Dr. D. G. Elliott, these local animlals 
were undisturbed. The cow punchers in 
the country were induced to refrain 
from killing them and gradually came 
to feel a real pride in the fact that they 
still had a few buffalo on their range. 
The animals increased, it is my impres- 
sion, to about 100 or perhaps 150 head, 
and then one season — it might have 
been 1900 — were absolutely wiped out 
by a party of Red River half breeds 
who went into the country and stayed 
there until almost the last buffalo had 
been killed. These Red River half 
breeds were some of those who had 
crossed the International boundary line 
after the Riel Rebellion in the effort to 
save their necks. It was said that later 
