582 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Oct. 14, 1911. 
When Antelope Were Plentiful 
By G. B. G. 
F IRST and last much has been written about the 
prong-horned antelope—that unique species 
which was formerly so abundant over west¬ 
ern temperate North America. Anyone who wishes 
to study the life history of the species will find 
in the books on the natural history of American 
mammals and on American big game, and in the 
files of Forest and Stream running back for 
nearly forty years, a great store of information 
about this species. Nevertheless, the time is soon 
coming when the people who have had actual 
experience with the antelope will be very few, 
and to-day of the younger generation of Ameri¬ 
cans probably not one in ten thousand has ever 
seen an antelope. 
It seems worth while, therefore, to set down 
some of one’s experiences with this interesting 
species—and even to repeat things that have al¬ 
ready been written—for the benefit of those who 
may not have read them, and who are wholly 
without personal knowledge of the antelope. 
The two most characteristic animals of the 
plains of the old-time were the buffalo and the 
antelope, and from the country over which they 
used to roam both species have almost entirely 
disappeared. The buffalo are wholly gone, ex¬ 
cept the domesticated animals, while the ante¬ 
lope have as entirely vanished from a great 
part of the territory they once pastured over. 
There was an enormous difference between the 
two animals, the buffalo huge, shaggy, clumsy 
and black, the antelope, typical of grace, light¬ 
ness and speed, and harmonizing in color won¬ 
derfully well with the yellow prairie that was 
his home. From the difference in size and 
color it resulted that, of all the larger animals 
, 4 . • 
of the prairie, the buffalo was the most con¬ 
spicuous, and the antelope the least so, and it 
is thus not surprising that the enormous multi¬ 
tudes of the greater beast should have been a 
subject of constant wonderment to the travelers 
over the plains in early days, while little or 
nothing was said about the multitude of the 
antelope. Yet there are not a few men to-day 
who will tell you that in their belief the ante¬ 
lope was nearly, if not quite, as numerous on 
the old plains as was the buffalo. But while 
the latter could be seen and recognized as far 
as the eye could reach, the antelope, if at a con¬ 
siderable distance, appeared merely as a white 
dot on the prairie, which might be a white 
stone, or even a distant bleached buffalo skull, 
and at a slightly greater distance it disappeared 
altogether. 
Abundant as the antelope was on the plains 
to the east of the Rocky Mountains, it was not 
less plenty in the rougher broken country 
among the mountains. Looking down from the 
top of a high butte, over a broad basin, in North 
Park, Colorado, I have seen the country below 
me almost covered with antelope of all sizes 
and ages, and could trace, winding among the 
sage brush, deep trails which they had worn in 
their passage between two passes, one of which 
led into, and another out of, this basin. In the 
same way, on the Laramie Plains, especially at 
a distance from the railroad, antelope were al¬ 
ways in sight, and in great numbers. This 
country, rough and broken, was good for the 
hunter, but bad for the antelope. Any one 
who passed along, with reasonable care could 
have very frequent shots on reaching the top 
of the little ridges which separated the many 
ravines and coulees running down from the 
higher hills, and a man who had been hunting 
for meat could easily have loaded a wagon with 
antelope carcasses in considerably less than a 
day. A man with whom I once traveled across 
such a country told me one night on coming 
into camp that he had killed eleven antelope 
during the day. He did this merely to satisfy 
his love of killing. We had all of us had many 
opportunities to shoot, but as there was meat 
in the wagon, had not fired at the game. 
In spring and autumn the antelope commonly 
shifted from summer to winter range and back 
again, and their migrations were made by regu¬ 
larly established roads, over which all the herds 
passed, so that at certain crossing places of the 
rivers, and at certain gaps between the hills, 
vast numbers of the animals passed along twice 
each year. Such a place was on the Missouri 
River, not very far below old Fort Berthold, 
where in autumn vast numbers of antelope that 
during the summer had fed on the high coteaux 
to the northeast of the Missouri, crossed the 
river to winter in the rough bad-land country 
of the Little Missouri, and about the Black 
Hills. Again, at a place not far from old Fort 
Steel, near the head of the North Platte, there 
was a pass where many thousands of antelope 
crossed each autumn, going south to certain 
wintering grounds in Colorado. 
Witness is borne to the very great number of 
the antelope in the early days hy the fact that 
the Indians commonly captured them in great 
numbers, in pens or pits, into which they were 
partly enticed and partly driven. And they 
were also sometimes brought into a circle of 
the people, in which, as it gradually contracted, 
men, and sometimes even women, knocked 
down the frantic animals with clubs, until al¬ 
most all were slain. 
In those' days the Litt’e Missouri River, which 
heads near the Black Hills of Dakota and flows 
north into the Missouri, was called by the Kiowa 
Indians, in whose country it lay, Antelope Pit 
River. The name was given from the fact that 
it was the practice- of the Indians to dig in the 
valley of this river along the trails habitually 
followed, pits -in which the antelope were 
taken. In later years, after the Kiowas had been 
expelled from the country and their places taken 
by the Cheyennes, those people captured antelope 
in the same way and in great numbers. An ac¬ 
count of the method' as practiced fifty or sixty 
years ago was given me once by White Bull, an 
old chief still living, and is here quoted from 
Forest and Stream : 
‘'When I was a young man more than forty 
years ago, my people had only a few guns. Then 
not many white men had come into the country, 
and we still took the animals on which we fed 
in the old ways that our people had always used. 
I have seen them catch the antelope in this o'd 
way, and now I will tell you how they did it. 
“When they were going to catch antelope there 
was always some one medicine man who told 
the people what they must do, and watched them 
to see that they did it. The man whom I saw 
do this was named Red Lodge. He always had 
his lodges painted red, and this is why he had 
that name. When the people needed antelope to 
eat or needed their skins for war shirts, and 
when the medicine was good, then Red Lodge 
made up his mind that ante’ope must be taken. 
INDIAN ANTELOPE PEN. 
