no reason for doing so. When fully grown, it is about the size of the
English black cattle, its height being 4 feet 2 to 4 inches at the
shoulder, and its girth very large for its height. Indians estimate
the flesh of a mature cow musk-ox equal to that of about three Barren
Grounds caribou, which would be from three hundred to three hundred
and fifty pounds; the bull may go as much as two hundred pounds
heavier. They travel in herds varying from half a dozen to thirty or
forty. Some authors have referred to “vast herds,” no doubt confusing
musk-oxen with caribou. Fifty would be a large herd, and I suppose from
ten to twenty would fairly represent the size of the average herd. As a
rule, such a sized herd would have one or two bulls. I found herds that
were all bulls, others that were all cows.
The robe is of a very dark brown, which seems black against the snow,
and the hair all over the body is coarse and long, reaching down below
the belly to the knees (especially long on the rump, where I measured
some that was fifteen to twenty inches), and under the throat it hangs
down as a thick mane. There appears to be a decided tendency to a hump,
which is emphasized by the shorter stiffish hair that covers shoulders
and the base of the neck. And there is a saddle mark of a dirty grayish
white. Underneath this hair and over all the body grows a coat of mouse
gray wool of fine texture, which protects the animal in winter and is
shed in the summer. No wool grows on the legs, which are massive, and
although short, appear to be shorter than they are because of the long
hair that falls over them. In running, they have a rolling, choppy kind
of a gait, and I noticed when they fell from a rifle wound they could
not get on their feet again.
The growth of the horn is very interesting. It begins exactly as with
domestic cattle by a straight shoot out from the head. For the first
year, it is impossible to tell the difference between the sexes by
the horns. In the second year, the bull horn is a little whiter than
that of the cow; the forehead of a two-year musk-ox I killed showed a
forehead covered with short, curlish hair. In this year the cow’s horn
begins to show a downward turn, and is fully developed at its third
year. The bull’s horns, on the contrary, are just beginning to spread
at the base in the third year. They continue spreading toward the
centre of the forehead until they meet in the bull’s fifth year, but in
the sixth year they begin to separate, leaving a crevice in the centre
which widens as the bull ages until it is from an inch to an inch and
a half wide. In the cow these crevices also open by age to even a
greater extent than in the bull. The horns of both bull and cow darken
as they reach their full development, until they are quite dark from
six to eight inches toward the base; and as the animal ages the extreme
darkness of horn disappears, until finally in the old animal of either
sex there remains only a black tip about a couple of inches on the
very point of the horn. As the crevice between the horns in both sexes
widens, the base of the boss on each side thickens to at least three
inches in the bull and two or less in the cow. On the boss the horn is
corrugated, but at the turn it becomes smooth, and is polished like an
ox horn on the point.
The largest horns of which I believe there is record are owned by a
taxidermist who purchased them; but the locality from which they came
is unknown. Their breadth, measured up and down at the crevice of the
boss, or, technically speaking, the breadth of palm, is 13¾ inches; the
length of horns on outside curve, 30¼ inches. The next largest pair is
in the British Museum and measures 13⅛ inches in breadth and 26¼ in
length. The third is 12⅜ by 26¾, presented to the British Museum by J.
Rae, an old time Hudson’s Bay Company factor, and got on the Barren
Grounds. The next is 12½ by 27¼, the property of the Earl of Lonsdale,
who picked up the head on his way down the Mackenzie River, several
years ago. Warburton Pike holds the two next heads, one 11 by 26⅞, and
the other 11 by 24¾. The largest head I killed is rather remarkable in
respect to length of horn and thickness of the boss. Indian hunters who
saw it, at all events, considered it most unusual. It measures 11½ by
27½; width of crevice, 1⅓ inch; thickness of boss at crevice, 3¾ inches.
The flesh of the musk-ox is exceedingly tough, and by no means pleasing
to the taste, especially in the rutting season (August and September),
when it is practically uneatable. There is a certain musky odor, but
it is not so pronounced as generally said to be. In fact the only
distinct musk-ox odor is got from breaking and crushing the dry dung.
As indicative of this queer creature, I may add that musk-ox dung is
but very little larger than and of very near the shape and color as
that of the large hare. The flesh of the cow is by no means choice, but
it is not bad; the flesh of the calf I found to be rather tasteless.
The unborn calf is considered quite a delicacy, of which my Indians did
not deny themselves merely because we had no cooking fire. They ate it
raw, just as they took it from the mother’s stomach. Cows never give
birth to more than one calf at a time, born in June.
[Illustration: MUSK-OX CALF
This specimen was captured March, 1901, east of Lady Franklin Bay,
about 30 miles inland, by Indians sent out by Captain H. H. Bodfish of
the whaler _Beluga_. After being exhibited in San Francisco, Chicago,
and New York, it was bought by Hon. William C. Whitney, who presented
it forthwith to the New York Zoölogical Society. It died within a few
months after. It was the first live member of the musk-ox family ever
brought to the United States. (Photograph used by permission of the New
York Zoölogical Society.)]
On only two occasions have musk-oxen been brought alive into captivity
in North America. One of these was an eighteen months’ old female
caught east of Lady Franklin Bay, about thirty miles inland, by a party
sent out by Captain H. H. Bodfish, of the whaler _Beluga_. This was
exhibited at the Sportsmen’s Show in New York, where it was purchased
by the Hon. William C. Whitney and presented to the Zoölogical Society
of New York in March, 1902. The other was a younger specimen caught
in Northeastern Greenland by Lieutenant Peary and brought out and
presented to the Zoölogical Society by him in October of the same
year. Both specimens, however, died within a few months. Up to now I
believe something like a dozen live specimens have been taken out to
the civilized world. All, however, at this writing, have died, except
two or three. One is in a zoölogical garden at Copenhagen, another in
a zoölogical garden at Berlin, and another is in England, owned by the
Duke of Bedford, but exhibited, I am told, in London.
MUSK-OX
(OVIBOS MOSCHATUS[5])
In spite of its name this Arctic ruminant has no near affinity with
the members of the ox tribe, the cheek teeth being more like those of
the sheep and goats, the muzzle, except for a small strip between the
nostrils, hairy, and the tail reduced to a mere stump concealed among
the long hair of the hind quarters. On the other hand, the resemblance
to the sheep is not very close, the horns, which in old males nearly
meet in the middle line of the forehead, being of a totally different
form and structure, and the skull likewise very distinct. In the males
the horns are much flattened and expanded at the bases, after which
they are bent suddenly down behind the eyes, to curve upward at the
tips. In the females they are much smaller, less expanded, and not
approximated at their bases. In both sexes their texture is coarse and
fibrous, and their color yellow. The long coat of dark brown hair,
depending from the back and sides like a mantle, affords an adequate
protection against the rigors of an Arctic winter; and the broad,
spreading hoofs, with hair on their under surface, give a firm foothold
on snow and ice. Two races are known--the typical Canadian and the
Greenland (_O. moschatus wardi_). The latter is characterized by the
presence of a certain amount of white on the forehead and the smaller
expansion of the horns. Height at shoulder about 4 feet; weight of one
weighed in parts, 579 pounds (D. T. Hanbury).
_Distribution._--Arctic America, approximately north and east of a line
drawn from the mouth of the Mackenzie River to Fort Churchill on Hudson
Bay, Greenland, and Grinnell Land, in latitude 32° 27´; approximate
southern limit, latitude 40° N.
MEASUREMENTS OF HORNS
========+=======+======+=================+===================
LENGTH |BREADTH| | |
ON | OF |TIP TO| LOCALITY | OWNER
OUTSIDE | PALM | TIP | |
CURVE | | | |
--------+-------+------+-----------------+-------------------
--30¼ | 13¾ | 30¼ | ? |W. W. Hart
| | | |
27¾ | 10 | 27½ |Barren grounds of|David T. Hanbury
| | |northern Canada |
| | | |
--27½ | 11¾ | 23 |Barren grounds of|Caspar Whitney
| | |northern Canada |
| | | |
27¼ | 12½ | 27 |Barren grounds of|Earl of Lonsdale
| | |northern Canada |
| | | |
--27¼ | 10⅝ | 27½ |Barren grounds of|Imperial Museum,
| | |northern Canada | Vienna
| | | |
26⅞ | 11 | 27 |Barren grounds of|Warburton Pike
| | |northern Canada |
| | | |
26¾ | 12⅜ | .. |North America |British Museum
| | | | (J. Rae)
| | | |
26¼ | 13⅛ | 27⅝ |North America |British Museum
| | | |
--25⅝ | 10 | 25 |North America |Dr. Albert von
| | | | Stephani
| | | |
24¾ | 11 | 25½ |Barren grounds |Warburton Pike
| | | |
24¼ | 7½ | 19 |Barren grounds |J. Talbot Clifton
| | | |
24¼ | 10½ | 26 |Barren grounds |Hon. Walter
| | | | Rothschild
| | | |
24 | 9¾ | 23⅛ |North America |Sir Edmund G.
| | | | Loder, Bart.
| | | |
--24 | .. | 25 | ? |Major W. Anstruther
| | | | Thomson
| | | |
23¼ | 6 | 22¾ | ? |A. Barclay Walker
| | | |
--21½ | 9 | 27 | ? |Dublin Museum
| | | |
--♀21⅛ | 4¾ | 20⅝ | ? |Imperial Museum,
| | | | Vienna
| | | |
♀18⅝ | 4¼ | .. |North America |British Museum
| | | | (A. G. Dallas)
| | | |
♀17 | 4⅝ | 9⅞ |North America |Dr. Albert von
| | | | Stephani
--------+-------+------+-----------------+-------------------
MUSK-OX (_Ovibos moschatus wardi_)
-------+--------+------+-----------------+-------------------
24¾ | 8¼ | 22½ |Greenland |Rowland Ward
| | | |
24½ | 7¼ | 27 |Greenland |Rowland Ward
=======+========+======+=================+===================
THE BISON
BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL
[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE HERD]
The buffalo was the largest and economically the most important of
North American mammals. It was also one of the most numerous, and over
a great area of the continent was practically the sole support of
its aboriginal inhabitants. Within the memory of men who as yet are
hardly middle-aged, it roamed the country between the Missouri River
and the Rocky Mountains, in multitudes so vast that it was commonly
stated that its numbers could not be materially reduced, that it would
exist long after the speakers had died. Yet, within thirty years it
has so absolutely disappeared that the number of living wild buffalo
existing to-day is probably not greater than the herd of European
bison--commonly, but erroneously, called aurochs--so carefully
preserved in the forests of Lithuania by the Russian Czar.
The history of the buffalo’s extermination has been many times written,
and the cause of its disappearance is not far to seek. It was killed
in great numbers by the Indians, who used its flesh for food, its skin
for clothing and for their shelters. Yet, under natural conditions, the
destruction which they wrought was never very extensive, and was more
than compensated for by the annual increase. Wolves, bears, and other
wild animals which were found in great numbers throughout the buffalo’s
range in old days, devoured many of them; but these were largely the
aged, wounded, and crippled, or those which were drowned in the rivers,
or mired in quicksands and mud-holes. All this destruction by natural
enemies did little more than keep the race in good condition, by
cutting off the sickly and the feeble.
When, however, the white man appeared on the scene, new conditions
arose. The buffalo had a robe which was as useful to the white man
as to the Indian. A trade speedily sprang up in these robes, which
the Indians were glad to kill and tan for a cupful of sugar, or a few
charges of powder and ball, or a drink or two of alcohol. Now, the
Indians had a motive for killing which heretofore they had not had.
They killed more buffalo and made more robes than before, but still
they made no impression on the wandering millions which swayed to and
fro under the influence of the seasons. Steamboats might pass down the
Missouri River loaded to the guards with bales of robes, but the vast
herds of buffalo showed no diminution. The early white explorers, or
trappers, or traders, did not themselves take the trouble to collect
buffalo hides; there were more valuable furs in the country, beaver and
otter and bears, which brought better prices, and--more important than
this--did not require to be tanned before they became marketable. For a
buffalo skin untanned was never shipped; it was only after some Indian
woman had expended on it days of patient labor, that it would bring at
the trading post the pitiful reward which the white man gave.
At last, however,--and that was less than forty years ago,--a railroad
began to push its way out on to the broad plains lying between the
Missouri River and the Rockies, and to thrust itself into the very
region where the buffalo fed. Over the shining rails of this railroad
trains began to pass, carrying passengers; and among these were many
white men eager for gain. These at once saw the possibilities of the
buffalo. At first they killed them for meat, but soon the hides began
to be shipped also. And other men, learning that the buffalo hides
brought $2.00 each, and that buffalo were to be had for the trouble of
shooting them, crowded into the range.
Then there began along the Platte Valley in Nebraska, a scene of
slaughter which has seldom been equalled. The country was full of
buffalo skinners. Each hunter had his teams, and his gangs of skinners
which followed him about from place to place, and cared for the hides
of the beasts which he killed. In some places the only water accessible
was the Platte River, and here the buffalo came to drink. Here, too,
the hunters, concealed in ravines or in rifle-pits that they had dug,
shot down the beasts one by one, as they came to water, and, indeed,
formed so complete a cordon along the river’s banks, that the buffalo
could not get through and turned back into the hills. When at night the
thirsty herds tried to approach the river under cover of darkness, they
found that the hunters had built along the bottom great fires, which
they kept up all night, and which the scared buffalo did not dare to
pass.
It took but a little time to split the herd which for centuries had
passed across the valley north and south with the seasons. It was about
1870 when this work began, and in 1874 the buffalo were last seen in
the valley of the Platte. The herd had been split.
As other railroads to the southward pushed into the buffalo country,
the same scenes were enacted. The buffalo country swarmed with hunters
who came in constantly increasing numbers, so that none of them
earned any money by their butcher’s work. The price of hides fell,
but the buffalo continued to be slaughtered. Hundreds of thousands of
hides went to market, but these were only a small proportion of the
buffalo killed. Colonel Dodge has expressed the belief, that of the
buffalo killed, only one-fourth or one-fifth reached a market. It is
conceivable that the proportion was even less. A very large number of
the hunters knew nothing about hunting, or shooting, or skinning a
buffalo, or curing its hide. The number of maimed and crippled animals
that went off to die was very large. The number of hides ruined in
skinning was large, and the number improperly cured was still larger.
By the latter part of 1874, buffalo to the southward of the Platte
River began to be very scarce, and in 1876 they were almost gone.
After that none were found in the southern country except a few in the
southern portion of the Indian Territory and in the waterless country
of the pan-handle of Texas. There, protected by the drought, and so few
in number as to present little attraction to the skin hunter, a few
lingered for some years, until finally captured or destroyed by Buffalo
Jones in his expeditions after calves for domestication.
In the northern country the buffalo lingered longer. The Northern
Pacific Railroad, built as far west as Bismarck on the Missouri River
in 1873, stopped there for six or seven years, and it was not until
it had been continued well beyond the Missouri that it again entered
the buffalo range and brought with it, as was inevitable, the buffalo
skinner. When he came, he did the work he had done in the South,
and did it as effectively. But as the number of buffalo left in the
northern herd was small, it took only two or three years to destroy
them.
After 1883, except for a band of about five thousand which had been
overlooked on one of the Sioux reservations, there were no buffalo left
in the northern country except a few scattering individuals, which,
hidden in out-of-the-way places, had been overlooked by the hunters
and Indians, and so for a year or two were preserved from slaughter.
In the arid region about the heads of the Dry Fork and Porcupine Creek
in Montana, one of these little groups was left, which yielded to
expeditions sent out by the National Museum and the American Museum
of Natural History, a series of specimens, probably the last of this
species ever to be collected for science. They were brought together
just in time, for since then there have been no buffalo.
A small herd of the so-called wood bison still inhabits the vast
wilderness between Athabasca Lake and Lesser Slave Lake, but their
numbers are few. In the year 1900 there were two little bunches of
wild buffalo in the United States, perhaps neither of them numbering
more than fifteen or twenty head. In the summer of 1901 one of these
bunches, which had long ranged in Lost Park, Colorado, was wiped out
by poachers, while for some years nothing has been heard of the other
little band which ranged in Montana, and which, in 1895, numbered
forty or fifty head, no less than thirty-two of which were killed a
year or two later by Red River half-breeds who made a special trip
to their range. At present the only important band of buffalo in the
United States is that ranging within the confines of the National
Park, and it is altogether probable that this does not number more than
twenty-five or thirty.
No doubt the extraordinary abundance of the buffalo had something to
do with the wastefulness of the slaughter which followed the railroad
building into the buffalo range. Many people no doubt really believed
that in their time the buffalo could not be exterminated. They seemed
to reason that as there always had been “millions of buffalo” there
always would be. Men killed buffalo for any foolish, childish reason
that might come into their heads,--to try their guns, to see whether
they could hit them, for fun!
How wantonly even some of the first traders destroyed them is often
shown by the few writings that have come down to us from those early
days. Henry, in his Journal of August, 1800, tells of the way in which
he and some of his men passed the time while waiting for others of his
people to come up. He says, “We amused ourselves by lying in wait,
close under the bank, for the buffalo which came to drink. When the
poor brutes came to within about ten yards of us, on a sudden we would
fire a volley of twenty-five guns at them, killing and wounding many.
We only took the tongues. The Indians suggested that we should all fire
together at one lone bull which appeared, to have the satisfaction,
as they said, of killing him stone dead. The beast advanced till he
was within six or eight paces, when the yell was given, and all hands
let fly; but instead of falling he galloped off, and it was only
after several more discharges that he was brought to the ground. The
Indians enjoyed this sport highly--it is true, the ammunition cost them
nothing.”
There has been much misunderstanding as to the former distribution
of the buffalo over the North American continent, and the extent of
territory through which it was found. Many respected authorities have
declared that it occurred in Eastern Canada, and generally along the
Atlantic slope; in portions of New England, the Middle states, and
south even into Florida. It was said in general terms that the buffalo
occurred over the entire continent of North America, from Florida to
the 50th degree of north latitude.
These loose statements were corrected by Dr. J. A. Allen, in his
most important monograph on the American bisons, and it is now well
understood that the range of the buffalo included only about one-third
of the continent; that, while it was found on the Atlantic slope, this
was only in the southeastern portion of its range; while in Canada, New
England, and Florida, it was probably unknown.
The error into which early writers were led on this subject undoubtedly
arose from the terms used by the earlier explorers, who spoke
constantly of _vaches_, or _vaches sauvages_, and less frequently
of buffu or buffle. But the term _wild cows_, used by the early
French Jesuits and English explorers, referred to the elk (_Cervus
canadensis_), while the words _buffu_ or _buffle_ were used to
designate moose (_Alces_). In some of the narratives of the journeys of
the Jesuit travellers, there appear on almost every page references to
the herds of _vaches sauvages_, and many of these writers, at one time
or another, describe these wild cows in such unmistakable language as
to show beyond question that they were the elk or wapiti.
Dr. Allen assigns the Alleghany Mountains as the general eastern
boundary of the range of the buffalo, although explaining that it
frequently passed beyond that range, and showing conclusively that it
occurred in the western portions of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia,
North and South Carolina and Georgia. Mr. Hornaday cites some evidence
to show that it occurred in the District of Columbia, and quotes
Francis Moore, in his “Voyage to Georgia,” to prove that there, at
least, buffalo were found close to the salt water.
While Dr. Allen gives the Tennessee River as the southern boundary
of the buffalo’s range, west of the Alleghanies and east of the
Mississippi River, Mr. Hornaday quotes a number of references to
show that it occurred in some numbers in what is now the state of
Mississippi, and gives a tradition of the Choctaws, narrated by
Clayborne, in regard to the disappearance of the species from that
section. This tradition is to the effect that during the early part
of the eighteenth century a great drought occurred there by which the
whole country was dried up. For three years not a drop of rain fell.
Large streams went dry, and the forest trees all died. Up to that time,
it is said, elk and buffalo had been numerous there, but during this
drought these animals crossed the Mississippi River and never returned.
In the eastern portion of its range, the Great Lakes formed a barrier
on the north which the buffalo did not pass; but from western New York
westward, it was found in numbers along the southern shores of these
lakes, and in the territory now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. Audubon tells us that in the first years of the nineteenth
century there were buffalo in Kentucky, but declares that about 1810,
or soon after, they all disappeared. This disappearance was due chiefly
to their actual destruction by white men and by Indians, and not, as is
commonly stated, to the retiring of the great herds before the advance
of settlement and civilization. It seems that the last buffalo were
killed east of the Mississippi River about the year 1820, although it
may be that in Wisconsin and Minnesota they lasted somewhat longer.