twenty-five men (accompanied by Lieutenant Cooke, Third Infantry,
Adjutant, Assistant-Surgeon Fisk, and Mr. Hale, the post trader) rode
up the creek, and entered the valley above the herd. Then, forming a
skirmish line across the bottom, we very slowly advanced toward the
buffalo. When they first noticed us, the leaders seemed uncertain what
to do; but as they had been accustomed to seeing large parties of us,
instead of running, as I feared they might, they at length turned about
and began slowly to work backward in the direction from which they had
come. By nightfall the herd was on its old feeding ground, and there we
left it, and there it remained until spring, and would, no doubt, have
remained longer, but, unluckily, the Seventh Cavalry, under General
Custer, rode in upon it, as they came down the creek to the post for
supplies, after their unsuccessful chase after the Cheyennes, who had
run away from General Hancock. General Custer detailed two troops with
orders to secure meat for the command. After chasing it, and killing
forty-four head, the herd was scattered, and never returned. The herd
supplied the post (consisting of about three hundred officers and men)
with fresh beef from October 16, 1866, until about April 20, 1867.”
The buffalo calf, when captured very young, was easily tamed. Indeed,
nothing more was needed at times than to permit the calf to suck the
fingers for a moment or two, when it would follow the rider into camp,
and seemed to be wholly without fear of man. As already stated, when
very young it is hidden by its mother, and, like the young of deer,
elk, antelope, and other ruminants, it can then be captured, and makes
no effort to escape. This, by many writers, has been denounced as
stupidity and dulness. As a matter of fact, it is merely following out
the protective instinct which is common to the young of many large
mammals, at a time when they are without weapons for self-protection,
and without strength or speed to save themselves by flight.
At various times during the last two hundred years, attempts have been
made to domesticate the buffalo, and with entire success. But these
attempts have never been continued long enough to be productive of any
economic results. Nevertheless, buffalo were kept in captivity from the
beginning of the eighteenth century, and toward the end of that century
were actually domesticated, bred, and crossed with domestic cattle
in Virginia, and somewhat later in Kentucky. The very full account
given to Mr. Audubon by Mr. Robert Wycliff, of Lexington, Kentucky, in
1843, has often been quoted, and all the experiments since made have
confirmed the conclusions then stated. It was proved, and is now well
known, that the buffalo, in domestication, are easily handled, respect
fences, and are but little more difficult to control than domestic
cattle; that the male buffalo crosses readily with the domestic cow;
that the progeny of the two species are fertile with either species and
among themselves. It has also been demonstrated that the cross-bred
animal is larger than either parent, and so makes a better beef animal.
Besides, its hide yields a robe which, if not equal to that of the
buffalo, is, at least, vastly superior to the hide of the ordinary
beef. More important than either the beef or the robe, is the very
greatly increased hardiness of the cross-bred animal, which enables it
to endure extremes of cold and snow, which would destroy the ordinary
domestic cattle.
From the days of Robert Wycliff, almost to the time when Mr. C. J.
Jones, of Kansas, began experiments in breeding buffalo, little or
nothing had been done in this direction. A few years earlier Mr.
S. L. Bedson, of Stony Mountain, Manitoba, set to work at the same
problem, and both men met with abundant measure of success. Both bred
pure buffalo in considerable numbers, and both succeeded in breeding
the buffalo with the domestic cow, and securing a progeny which was
remarkable for size and for the robes produced. Indeed, Mr. Hornaday
quotes Mr. Bedson as saying that the three-quarter bred animal produces
“an extra good robe which will readily bring forty to fifty dollars in
any market where there is a demand for robes.”
It is altogether possible that the time for establishing a race of
buffalo cattle has past. The buffalo are extinct, and the number of
animals in captivity to be drawn on, very small. Nevertheless, the
great preponderance of bulls among these domesticated buffalo, makes
it possible that something in this direction might be done, though the
chances now are much against it.
The buffalo has often been broken to the yoke. Robert Wycliff says of
this animal, “He walks more actively, and I think has more strength
than an ox of the same weight. I have broken them to the yoke and found
them capable of making excellent oxen; and for drawing wagons, carts,
or other heavily laden vehicles on long journeys, they would, I think,
be greatly preferable to the common ox.” Under the yoke, however, they
are said to be somewhat difficult to control, and cases are cited
where broken buffalo have, for various causes, run away, to the great
detriment of the load they were hauling. In the year 1874 a settler on
Trail Creek, in Montana, told me that he had a pair of bulls broken to
the yoke, and declared that they would haul more than “any two yoke of
cattle on the place.”
There is another reason besides the lack of buffalo for thinking that
no systematic attempt to cross these animals with domestic cattle
will ever be attempted. The days of free ranging, where the cattle
are turned out on the prairie to look after themselves, winter and
summer, are almost over, and year by year the area of the free range
is becoming more and more contracted. The advantages of great size and
a valuable robe would still be an attraction to the farmer; but the
hardiness which enables the half-breed animal to endure almost any
winter weather will soon cease to be required, because the cattle of
almost all the western country will be kept under fence, and fed on hay
during the winter.
From time immemorial the buffalo furnished food to the Indians, and
with the coming into the land of the white man it supported him also.
What the primitive method was by which the Indians hunted buffalo we
do not know, but at the time the redmen became known to the whites,
when they were footmen, the only method of securing this animal was by
the surround, or by driving it into pens from which the buffalo could
not escape, and where they were easily destroyed. Such pens were built
at the foot of cut bluffs or low cliffs, over which the buffalo were
driven; or, in the more open and flat country, where ravines with
steep sides were not found, a long fenced causeway was often built, on
which the buffalo were driven, and when reaching its end, the leaders,
by reason of the pressure of those behind, were forced to jump into the
pen, and the others followed, until all were captured. Often, if the
drive was made over a high bluff, the fall killed many of the beasts,
and even when this did not take place, many of the younger and weaker
animals were destroyed by their fellows in the tremendous crush which
took place within the pen.
No sooner did the buffalo find themselves confined, than they began to
race about the enclosure, and the men standing on the logs which formed
its sides, shot them with their stone-headed arrows as they ran by,
until at length all had fallen.
The principle of the foot surround was not different from this. When a
herd of buffalo was found, the Indians waited for a day when the wind
did not blow, and then, creeping toward the buffalo, they surrounded
them on all sides. When the line was fairly complete, one man would
show himself, and perhaps frighten the buffalo by waving his robe at
them. They would start to run, when the men stationed at the point of
the circle toward which they were directing their course would show
themselves, toss their robes in the air, and turn them in another
direction. Thus, whichever way they ran, they found people standing
before them, and soon they began to run around in a circle within the
ring of men, and continued to do this until they became exhausted.
Little by little the men drew closer together, making the circle
smaller, and soon the buffalo were running near enough to them for them
to be shot by their arrows.
It did not always happen that the hunt was successful. Sometimes in the
pen a strong bull might find a place where no one was standing, and
might leap over the barrier, or at least leap on it, throwing his whole
weight against it. Very likely he would be followed by others, and
perhaps a number would succeed in surmounting the wall; or they might
even break it down, and then the whole herd would stream out of the pen
and be lost. Sometimes, too, in the surround, especially if the herd
of buffalo was large, it was found impossible to turn them, and they
would break their way through the ring of men. In like manner, when,
as sometimes happened, the Indians set up their lodges all about the
herd, the buffalo might yet find a way to break through and escape.
If, however, all went well, and a good part of the herd was killed,
there was great rejoicing all through the camp. Everybody was happy,
since now, for some days, food would be abundant, and every one would
have enough to eat; and there is nothing that the Indian dreads so much
as hunger.
Later, after the Indians obtained horses and iron-pointed arrows, and,
later still, repeating rifles, these old methods were all given up. It
was easier to chase the buffalo on horseback, and their pack-horses
gave them a ready means for bringing the spoils of the chase back to
the camp. Now, too, they used the lance in hunting, driving the horse
close up on the buffalo’s right side, holding the lance across the
body, and, with a mighty two-handed thrust, sending the keen steel deep
into the animal’s vitals.
Perhaps no more exciting scene could be witnessed than one of the
old-time buffalo chases by the Indians. Naked themselves, they rode
their naked horses, carrying their quivers of arrows on their backs or
by their sides, and their bows in their hands. The good buffalo horses
were swift of foot to catch the cow, admirably trained for running over
the rough prairie, often dangerous from badger holes or burrows of the
prairie dog, and knowing how to approach the buffalo, and also how to
avoid its charge--trained, in fact, just as well as the cow-pony is
trained, which knows exactly what is expected of him when he is cutting
cattle out of a bunch. The chase was conducted in silence, and the
only sound heard was the rumble of a thousand hoofs--dull where the
ground was soft, and sharp if it hardened. If the herd was large, the
scene was one of great confusion. Buffalo and horses with their riders
were dimly seen amid the cloud of dust thrown up by the fleeing herd.
Horses were constantly overtaking the buffalo, riders were bending
down, horses were sheering off, buffalo were falling. The old bulls,
passed by the swift riders, were turning off and fleeing, singly or in
little groups, to right and to left, while the swifter cows, with heads
down and tails in air, were pressing forward in flight to escape the
Indians, who were riding with their rearmost ranks.
Not greatly differing from this, save that guns were used and there
was much yelling and noise, were the hunts of the wild Red River
half-breeds. These were pursued on horseback, and the men were armed
with the old Hudson Bay smoothbore flint-lock guns. Powder was carried
in a horn and balls in the mouth. When he had discharged his gun,
the hunter poured the powder from the horn directly into the barrel,
guessing at the quantity, slipped a ball from the mouth into the
barrel, the gun was given a jar on the saddle to settle the load, a
little priming was poured into the pan, and he was ready for another
shot.
On such hunts the Red River half-breeds transported their families and
their property almost entirely in the well-known Red River carts, each
drawn by a single horse, and containing, besides a load of baggage, a
woman and perhaps two or three children.
Besides these wholesale methods of taking buffalo, of course they were
killed singly by men who crept close enough to them to drive even
a stone-headed arrow deep enough into the sides to reach the life.
Often, when the buffalo were in situations where it was impossible to
approach them, men disguised as wolves crept in among the herd, and
killed buffalo with their arrows. Catlin and others have described
and figured this method of approach, which at the present day is
traditional only among the Indians; yet an old friend, who died a few
years ago, almost a hundred years old, has told me that he had many
times killed buffalo in this way, either alone or in company with some
Indian friend.
Indians and half-breeds alike preserved the flesh of the buffalo by
drying it. The strips or wide flakes of meat were cut about one-quarter
of an inch thick and hung on scaffolds exposed to sun and air. In
a day or two the meat was thoroughly dried, when it was bent into
proper lengths, and either tied in bundles or done up in parfleches.
It was from this dried meat that the well-known pemmican was made.
The dried meat was roasted over a fire of coals, and then broken up
by pounding with sticks on a hide, or by pounding between two stones.
This pulverized flesh was mixed with the melted fat of the buffalo, and
after the whole mass had been thoroughly stirred, was packed in sacks
made of buffalo skin, which were then sewed up with sinew, and as the
mass gradually cooled the sack became hard, and would keep for a very
long time.
The killing of buffalo, as described, was in no sense sport; instead,
it was work of the hardest kind. The swift ride over the dry plains
through the clouds of dust, the killing of the buffalo, and finally the
cutting up of the animals was physical labor far harder than most of
that performed by civilized man. Usually, the buffalo were killed far
from water, and the severe work that the man had been doing and the
summer heat made him very thirsty. It is not strange, then, that he
slaked his thirst by devouring the liver, sprinkled with gall, or by
eating raw the gelatinous nose of the buffalo.
The description of a butchering, given by Audubon in his “Missouri
River Journal,” is very graphic, and is worth quoting here:--
“The moment that the buffalo is dead, three or four hunters, their
faces and hands often covered with gunpowder, and with pipes lighted,
place the animal on its belly, and, by drawing out each fore and
hind leg, fix the body so that it cannot fall again; an incision is
made near the root of the tail, immediately above the root in fact,
and the skin cut to the neck, and taken off in the roughest manner
imaginable, downward and on both sides at the same time. The knives
are going in all directions, and many wounds occur in the hands and
fingers, but are rarely attended to at this time. The pipe of one man
has perhaps given out, and with his bloody hands he takes the one of
his nearest companion, who has his own hands equally bloody. Now one
breaks in the skull of the bull, and with bloody fingers draws out
the hot brains and swallows them with peculiar zest; another has now
reached the liver, and is gobbling down enormous pieces of it; while
perhaps a third, who has come to the paunch, is feeding luxuriously on
some--to me--disgusting-looking offal. But the main business proceeds.
The flesh is taken off from the sides of the boss, or hump bones, from
where these bones begin to the very neck, and the hump itself is thus
destroyed. The hunters gave the name of ‘hump’ to the mere bones when
slightly covered by flesh; and it is cooked, and is very good when fat,
young, and well broiled. The pieces of flesh taken from the sides of
these bones are called _filets_, and are the best portion of the animal
when properly cooked. The forequarters, or shoulders, are taken off,
as well as the hind ones, and the sides, covered by a thin portion of
flesh, called the dépouillé, are taken out. Then the ribs are broken
off at the vertebræ, as well as the boss bones. The marrow-bones,
which are those of the fore and hind legs only, are cut out last.
The feet usually remain attached to these; the paunch is stripped of
its covering of layers of fat, the head and backbone are left to the
wolves. The pipes are all emptied, the hands, faces, and clothes all
bloody, and now a glass of grog is often enjoyed, as the stripping off
the skin and flesh of three or four animals is truly very hard work.…
When the wind is high, and the buffaloes run toward it, the hunters’
guns often snap, and it is during their exertions to replenish their
pans that the powder flies and sticks to the moisture every moment
accumulating on their faces; but nothing stops these daring and usually
powerful men, who, the moment the chase is ended, leap from their
horses, let them graze, and begin their butcher-like work.”
The Indian and the half-breed killed the buffalo for their
support,--for food, clothing, shelter, and many of their implements.
The civilized buffalo skinner exterminated it for its hides. There
was another class which did something toward wiping out the buffalo,
yet the numbers killed by them were inconsiderable in comparison
with those killed for commercial purposes. This class comprised those
who ran buffalo for sport. Buffalo-running was not a difficult art,
nor especially exciting, except so far as it is exciting to chase and
overtake some creature that is trying to escape. Provided a man had
a good horse and was fairly accustomed to riding, there was little
difficulty and little danger in the buffalo chase. At the same time,
the combination of the swift ride, the rough country, the dust and dirt
thrown up by the flying herd, and the close proximity of the great
beasts have reduced many a buffalo runner on his first chase to a pitch
of nervousness which made him do precisely the wrong thing. There have
been cases, not a few, where riders, trying to kill buffalo with a
pistol, have shot their own horses instead of the buffalo; and at least
one case came to my knowledge where the excited hunter, riding up on
the right instead of the left side of the bull, and shooting across his
own body, managed to shoot himself in the left arm.
There was something rather exhilarating in the headlong ride after
buffalo, a game not unlike “follow my leader,” which boys play, where
the leader chooses the roughest and most difficult ground over which
he can pass, and the follower is obliged to take the same route. But
buffalo-hunting is now a sport of the distant past, and it is needless
to speak of it at any length.
In the days of its abundance the buffalo was a most impressive species,
and their enormous numbers have been a theme on which many writers
have delighted to linger. Adjectives have failed them to describe the
multitudes of buffalo seen, and it was not unusual for men to travel
long distances among great herds, which made slow way for them as
they passed along. Many calculations have been made of the numbers of
buffalo seen at one time; but, after all, these can be little more
than guesswork. Terms like thousands and millions, so commonly used,
have little or no meaning, for we have no standard of comparison by
which to measure them. All the earlier writers, however graphic their
descriptions of their numbers, fail to impress the reader, because no
one could comprehend such numbers except by seeing them. Dr. Allen,
Mr. Hornaday, Colonel Dodge, and many of the old explorers, give
much matter bearing on this subject. A few lines from the Journal of
Alexander Henry give some idea of their numbers on the Red River. He
says, under date of September 18, 1800: “I took my usual morning view
from the top of my oak, and saw more buffalo than ever. They formed
one body, commencing about half a mile from camp, whence the plain was
covered on the west side of the river as far as the eye could reach.
They were moving slowly southward, and the meadow seemed as if in
motion. This afternoon I rode a few miles up Park River. The few spots
of wood along it have been ravaged by buffalo; none but the large trees
are standing, the barks of which are rubbed perfectly smooth, and heaps
of wool and hair lie at the foot of the trees. The small wood and brush
are entirely destroyed, and even the grass is not permitted to grow
in the points of the wood. The bare ground is more trampled by these
cattle than the gate of the farm yard.”
Even in recent times one might journey for days at a time through
herds, which to the eye seemed absolutely to cover a blackened prairie,
and I myself have travelled for weeks through the Northwest without,
at any time during the day, being out of sight of buffalo. How many
millions there were in the great herds through which we used to pass,
it is useless now to compute. They have all gone. But over a vast
extent of the western country they have left memorials still visible
and long to endure in the deep trails which furrow the prairie in all
directions.
Other mementos still to be seen, and stirring the heart of the
old-timer, though to the man of to-day they are without a meaning, are
the huge erratic boulders which lie here and there over the prairie
where they were dropped by the great ice mass in its passage down from
the highland. Against such boulders the buffalo used to rub their
bodies, and such masses of granite or of flinty quartzite, polished and
with their sharp angles worn away by the rubbing against them of the
tough hides, may often be seen. About such a rock, deep worn in the
ground, is the trench, where the bulls and the cows and the younger
animals once marched as they pushed their sides against the hard rock,
their hoofs cutting the soil into fine dust to be blown away by the
wind. The angles of these old rubbing-stones are still discolored by
the grease left on them from the buffalo’s skins, and looking at them,
one might fancy that they had been used only yesterday.
Here, then, are monuments of imperishable granite, fashioned by a race
of dumb creatures, and telling to him who can read their sculpturing a
long story of life and power and multitude forever gone. From earliest
time man has set up all over the earth his enduring memorials to hold
the wonder of later ages; but of the races of the beasts, which one has
done this, save only the bison?
AMERICAN BISON
(BOS BISON[6])
The great elevation of the forequarters, the mass of long hair
clothing the head, shoulders, and fore part of the body, together
with the peculiar form of the head and horns, the latter of which are
cylindrical, serve at once to distinguish the bison from the other
members of the ox tribe. Some of the points distinguishing the American
bison from its European cousin are that the mass of hair on the fore
quarters is longer, the form of the skull is different, the horns are
shorter, thicker, blunter, and more sharply curved. In the skull of the
American animal the sockets of the eyes have a more tubular form.
Height at shoulder about 6 feet; weight from 15 to 20 hundredweight; an
adult bull weighed by W. T. Hornaday scaled 1727 pounds.
_Distribution._--The greater portion of western North America,
ascending to the Great Slave Lake, and descending to New Mexico and
Texas; now nearly exterminated. American writers recognize two races
(or species), the prairie bison (_B. bison typicus_) and the larger
wood bison (_B. bison athabascæ_) of the forest highlands of the
northwest.
MEASUREMENTS OF HORNS