Buffalo Memorials. 
III.—The Trail and Wallow. 
Over much of the western 
country, where the buf¬ 
falo used to range, the 
plow has turned over the 
soil and buried the me¬ 
morials which he left be¬ 
hind him. In the territory 
that has been cultivated 
no signs of the wild inhabitants remain. 
Even where the earth villages of the Indians 
used to stand along the streams, forming 
low mounds, as the supports and earth walls 
and roofs sank to decay, the plow, passing 
again and again over the soil, has so leveled it 
that the mounds are no longer seen. So in 
such regions it is with the buffalo trails and 
with the buffalo wallows. 
But in the arid northern country all over the 
hills, the trails of the buffalo may still be traced. 
Often they are visible merely as green lines 
showing brightly against the yellow prairie over 
which they run, but sometimes they are deep 
worn, six or eight inches, even a foot below the 
surface of the surrounding soil. To-day many 
of these trails are used by the range cattle which 
occasionally are so numerous as to wear away 
the grass which has sprung up in the old path, 
but more often the number passing over the 
trail is so small as only to keep the grass worn 
down. 
In ancient days in the soft chalky soil of 
Kansas, these trails were sometimes so deeply 
worn that the buffalo as they passed along 
rubbed their sides against the walls of the trail, 
and over the herd, moving steadily onward at 
a slow walk, hung clouds of fine dust, a chalky 
powder as fine as plaster of paris but yellow, 
or cream colored. 
When undisturbed the buffalo usually traveled 
in single file, often the nose of each great brute 
close to the hindquarters of the one ahead of it. 
Groups of buffalo followed established paths, and 
sitting on a high hill, overlooking some river or 
little prairie lake, one often saw the buffalo in 
long lines stringing in from all directions. For 
the most part the trails led to water, or per¬ 
haps to some favorite crossing place on a 
stream. If they led toward a river, many of 
them would be parallel or nearly so, or they 
might converge toward some point where the 
descent of the bluffs was gradual and easy, for 
the buffalo always chose for himself the easiest 
ways. 
To-day, as one observes those trails—me¬ 
morials of ancient days—he may wonder why 
they stand out so brightly green upon a prairie 
that in late summer is sere and yellow. The 
reason is obvious. Millions of buffalo traveling 
for uncounted years over the same paths have 
fertilized them by their droppings, so that the 
soil there is now far richer than elsewhere on 
the prairie, for the buffalo chip deposited in 
the trail never grew dry and hard as it did on 
the prairie, but was at once trodden into the 
soil and reduced to powder, to nourish a subse¬ 
quent growth of grass. 
It is not surprising that these trails- over the 
hills are noticed by travelers who are whirled 
along in the railroad trains of to-day, nor that 
they inquire what they may mean, nor that when 
their significance is explained the thoughtful 
inquirer should consider with interest and won¬ 
der the changes that have taken place over the 
broad land of the West. 
Far less conspicuous than any other of the 
memorials that he has left is the buffalo wallow. 
This was simply a place where in the heats of 
summer, or when greatly pestered by insects, or 
when worried by last winter’s tattered coat 
which he had not yet gotten rid of, the buffalo 
threw himself down in some damp or wet place 
and rolled until covered with mud and water. 
9 
The process has often been described, and is 
well understood. The practice is not peculiar 
to the buffalo, since in the heats of summer the 
elk, and bears, and probably many other animals 
bathe themselves in this fashion. Sometimes 
a buffalo wallowing on a soil which was white, 
or nearly so, emerged from his bath a white 
buffalo instead of a black one, and more than 
once people have been deceived by this color, 
and imagining that they saw before them an 
albino buffalo, have chased it and killed it, only 
to find that the color came off on their fingers 
in white powder. Such an experience was had 
by Col. D. L. Brainard, of Arctic exploration 
fame. In the same way, many years ago, I be¬ 
came highly excited over what I believed to be 
a black elk, which a closer inspection showed 
to be merely an elk that had been wallowing in 
a spring hole in the timber. Sometimes, too, 
the buffalo coming from such a bath coated with 
thick mud, dried off quickly, and the clots of 
dried mud clinging to the long hair of head 
and forelegs, rattled curiously against each other 
as the animals galloped away, to the mystifica¬ 
tion of any inexperienced pursuer. 
Rubbing Stones. 
The buffalo’s practice of rolling on the ground, 
which, when the ground was wet, made the 
wallows that have been spoken of was, no 
doubt, often done for the same reason that a 
horse rolls; that is, in order to irritate the 
whole skin by a thorough rubbing or scratch¬ 
ing. In the timber country where buffalo were 
abundant it was not uncommon in old times to 
see cottonwood trees browned and polished to 
a height of five feet or more by the rubbing 
against them of the buffalos’ bodies. A hundred 
years ago Henry the younger speaks of places 
where the bark had been rubbed off the trees by 
the scratching of the buffalo, and a river not far 
from the old fort he occupied for years at 
Pembina was named the Scratching River. 
Close to the mountains, or along streams 
where there is much timber, these scratching 
places are scarcely noticeable, because each one 
was used by only a few animals and at long 
intervals, and the evidences of their rubbing 
have been removed by the weather. But in some 
sections of the treeless northwest over which 
in glacial times the great ice sheet passed, there 
will be found boulders dropped by the ice, some¬ 
times very large, and at others projecting only 
a few feet above the level of the soil, which in 
ancient times the buffalo used as rubbing stones. 
If in traveling over the prairie on foot or on 
horseback, the traveler happens to see such a 
lonely erratic it is worth his while to go to it 
and examine it closely. He will find it polished 
on all sides by the friction of the tough hides 
of buffalo, and if he passes his hands over its 
round smoothed surfaces he can still feel there 
the grease which has accumulated from the use 
to which the stone was put. All around it, and 
close to it, he will find worn a deep trench in 
which are boulders, stones and gravel, but where 
there is no vegetation, for there is no soil to 
nourish it. This trench has been made by the 
buffalo as they walked about the stone and 
comfortably scratched their sides against it. 
Their ponderous hoofs have cut and torn up the 
soil and reduced it to fine powder which the 
winds have then carried away, leaving only the 
heavy stones at the bottom of the trench. 
Of all the memorials which the buffalo have 
left on the wide plains where once they were so 
abundant, the rubbing stone is by far the most 
permanent. These huge erratics, brought thither 
by the ice of glacial times, and dropped seem¬ 
ingly at haphazard here and there on the prairie, 
will endure for a long time. They will last until 
a day shall come, if it ever does come, when 
the vandal white man, having cultivated all the 
rest of the earth, will use on them some high 
explosive, break them to atoms and bury the 
fragments. 
Several years ago there was printed in the 
Forest and Stream a mention of one of these 
rubbing stones, which I quote here. It is as 
follows: 
“From a high hill which gives a wide look¬ 
out may be seen, far off, on the verge of the 
horizon, where the sky bends down to meet 
the earth, a tiny speck. Traveling onward it 
grows clearer and nearer. At first it seems a 
haystack, then a cabin, then a wagon, at last a 
buffalo; but it is none of these. 
“Still riding on over the yellow rolling plains, 
where the short stems of the prairie grass quiver 
with a constant motion, where little ground 
