A Monarch of the Plains—The Hunchback Cows of Cibola—A Boon to
the Frontiersman—Wide Range of the Bison—Marrow Bones for the
Epicure—Washington Irving a Buffalo Hunter—The Rushing Run of the
Bison Herd—The Sacred White Buffalo Cow Skin—A Calf with a Bull
Head—Wolves and White Bears.
Another denizen of the wilderness that performed an important part
in its preparation for occupation by the white race was the buffalo
or _Bison Americanus_, a monarch of the plains, huge and fierce in
appearance; a monarch with the mien of a lion and the resistance of a
sheep; an animal quite the opposite of the interesting beaver in almost
every particular but numbers. In this respect, however, it vied with
its smaller associate, roaming by millions and millions up and down
across the limitless prairie-ocean, apparently as inexhaustible as the
vagrant breezes blowing one day here and one day there. But the breezes
still waft above the billowy surface, while the bison has vanished
like a dream. The farm, the ranch, the town, and the railway now claim
his vast grazing grounds. Were it not for a few specimens preserved in
private herds and zoölogical gardens, this strange creature would be
as unfamiliar to us in the life as are the _Dinosaurs_ of the Jurassic
plains.
[Illustration: The Monarch of the Plains.
The Figure a Photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.]
They were the "hunchback cows" which Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca first
accurately described to the European world, although it is said that
Montezuma had one captive in his collection of animals at the time
Cortez pillaged the Aztec capital. They were later called "cattle or
cows of _Cibola_" (and _Sibolo_)[4] by the Spaniards, perhaps because
the inhabitants of the first group of native villages of New Mexico
encountered by Coronado were supplied with buffalo robes and were in
the habit of going to hunt the animals on the plains of the river Pecos,
where at that time they were abundant. The name passed into common use
and to-day, although there is the correct word _Bisónte_, the American
bison is generally known in Spanish as _Cibolo_. In his celebrated
traverse of the Texas and Kansas prairies in 1540 Coronado saw immense
herds that roamed there. The buffalo range was great, especially in
a north and south direction, its southernmost limit having been in
north-eastern Mexico a little below the lower end of Texas, while
its northernmost was the upper shores of Great Slave Lake. It seems,
however, that it did not cover this range in latitude at one time, so
that in Coronado's day the northern limit was doubtless considerably
below Great Slave Lake. The buffalo was not migratory in the sense that
herds from the extreme north traversed the entire range and occupied a
place on the southern edge, but it was migratory as a whole, swinging
back and forth from north to south and south to north like a huge
pendulum, the various sub-herds always retaining practically the same
relative position to the complete mass. It appears also that in this
annual oscillation with the seasons it gradually retired from the
extreme southern limit and encroached beyond its northern limit, till
the position at the north mentioned was arrived at. This is indicated by
the statement of an Amerind of the Athabasca country, who in explaining
his age to Mackenzie, said that "he remembered the opposite hills
and plains now interspersed with groves of poplars, when they were
covered with moss, and without any animal inhabitant but the reindeer.
By degrees, he said, the face of the country changed to its present
appearance, when the elk came from the east and was followed by the
buffalo; the reindeer then retired to ... a considerable distance."[5]
It is therefore quite probable that, had not the European arrived to
interfere, the buffalo eventually would have gone farther north and
would have spread over Alaska. It was perfectly at home in the cold
northland so long as the summers permitted grass and herbage to mature.
The Saskatchewan country was full of them all winter, though they were
forced to paw away the snow to reach the grass. The range east and west
was also extensive, though this was not the direction of its annual
movement. Its eastern limit was the extent of the Mississippi valley
north of the Tennessee; and possibly as far as Lake Champlain. While
seemingly not as numerous in this eastern part of its range as farther
west, yet there were large numbers, and the hunters of the early days
of European settlement often killed them. Albert Gallatin states that
while in western Virginia in 1784 he subsisted chiefly on buffalo meat.
The city of Buffalo takes its name from this animal, which formerly
fed on its site. That they were abundant in this eastern region long
before Gallatin's time is established by the large quantities of
their bones found around the salt licks of the Ohio valley. At Big
Bone Lick, Kentucky, these accumulations are so great as to indicate,
beyond question, a very remote date for the beginning of the range of
the buffalo in this region. Beneath them the bones of the mastodon are
discovered.[6]
It is strange that no bison remains have thus far been found in the
ancient mounds of the Mississippi valley; nor are there any images
of them on Moundbuilder pipes. It is also strange that, despite the
abundance of buffalo throughout the greater part of the West, pictures
of it made by the natives should be so rare. The Sioux lived with and on
the bison, yet they seldom drew it, while their robes are covered with
drawings of horses and other animals.
On the west the limit of the range, at least north of about latitude
41°, up to the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century seems
to have been the Rocky Mountains. Lewis and Clark, on their great
journey of 1804-06, make no mention of the buffalo on the Pacific side
of the mountains, hence it is probable that few had crossed there at
that time. This would imply that it was the advance of civilisation
which impelled the buffalo in numbers finally to seek passes over the
Backbone and spread across the upper valley of Green River, of Bear
River, and of the Columbia. The possibility always remains that there
may have been other causes at work, perhaps climatic, to induce or
assist this movement, and it is also possible that the animal may have
crossed earlier, and have temporarily refrained from migrating in that
direction, perchance on account of extra deep snow or some such natural
interference, although the usual snow did not prevent their crossing
in dead of winter. Escalante's party in 1776 found abundant signs of
buffalo on White River, near the Green, and killed one there. They named
a canyon Arroyo del Cibolo because of the many buffalo trails in it.
But the modern Pai Utes apparently had no knowledge of this animal, so
that if it ever was found in any numbers in southern Utah, the period
of occupation must have been remote. Dr. Coues believed that it ranged
at one time in Arizona, though he could not recall the ground for this
belief, simply remembering that it appeared to him sufficient at the
time. The only indication that I know of, of the former presence of
the buffalo in southern Utah is a rock picture found on the walls of
Kanab Canyon (see page 37), some eight miles north of latitude 37° and
about two west of longitude 112° 30´. This drawing would suggest that
some natives captured a buffalo not far from the spot, though it might
have been the record of a hunt at some other point. Buffalo would not
have been likely to cross the vast depths of the Grand Canyon to the
southward, hence they could have arrived at this place easily only by
way of the Sevier River, the Escalante Desert, or by turning the western
end of the Grand Canyon. At Gunnison on Sevier River a buffalo skull
was found in a canyon ten feet below the surface. It is more probable
that they would come from the north, yet if they did not cross the
mountains there till 1810, a new difficulty is met with, for the present
Pai Utes seem not to have made any rock pictures. These were done by
the pottery-making, house-building Amerinds, who, as far as can be
determined, had vanished from the region long before 1810.
[Illustration: Picture of Buffalo on Cliff Wall, Southern Utah.
Pecked Drawing Copied by B. L. Young.]
I do not remember any reference to buffalo on Espejo's trip to Zuñi and
west in 1583, nor on the journey Juan de Oñate made across Arizona and
back in 1604-05; it is likely that if this animal ranged there it was
before the time of Coronado. The south-western limit at that period
appears to have been the first mountain range west of the Rio Pecos.
North of latitude 57° they never crossed the Rocky Mountains. In 1820,
according to Long, they had not yet entirely crossed in the central
portion, that is to Green River and the Columbia, yet in 1824 they were
ranging the Green, Columbia, and Bear River valleys in vast numbers. Up
to 1823 they existed in great herds in the new State of Missouri, and
their crossing to the Pacific slope thus appears about coincident with
their retiring from this eastern ground. In their western range they
extended as far as the Blue Mountains of Oregon, and even to the foot of
the Sierra Nevada in the region farther south. Fossil remains have been
found, according to Coues, within the limits of its range, east of the
Rocky Mountains. There were two kinds of buffalo in the opinion of the
frontiersmen, the wood buffalo and the prairie type. Apparently there
was not sufficient differentiation in these to warrant the separation.
They were practically the same, the variation being merely one of
habitat, and individual change, like the occasional development of an
extra rib. The buffalo inhabiting the woods usually grew to a larger
size than that of the plains, but this was probably the result of a less
active life and more abundant food. All buffalo at maturity were large
animals, the male weighing 1000 to 1500 pounds or more, and the female
from 800 to 1200. In size the adult male measured about 9 feet from
muzzle to root of tail, and 13 feet 6 inches to end of tail including
the hairs, which were about 15 inches long. In similar measurement the
adult female was about 6 feet 6 inches to root of tail and 9 feet to
the extreme end, the hairs being about 10 inches long. The male at the
highest part was 5½ to 6 feet and the female about 5 feet; at the hips
both sexes were around 4½ feet. The horns of the male were short and
very thick at the base, with a quick taper to a sharp point. Those of
the female were smaller at the base, but about the same in length and
curve as those of the male. In winter the colour of the woolly hair was
a blackish brown, but it became lighter in summer and so varied somewhat
with season and locality. The hair was moulted in early spring except
that on the shoulders, which with age became tawny—a yellowish brown.
The earliest published drawing of the American bison is supposed to be
that which appeared in 1558 in Thevet's book,[7] sixteen years after the
return to Mexico of Coronado, but it would seem that some illustration
of an animal that was considered so remarkable must have been printed
before that. Since then it has been drawn and painted unnumbered times.
It figured largely, as a matter of course, in Catlin's celebrated
illustrations of aboriginal life in the Far West, and forms the subject
for about the best picture Albert Bierstadt ever painted, _Buffalo
Hunting on Laramie Plains_.[8]
[Illustration: The Grand Teton from Jackson's Hole.
The Buffalo Reached this Valley by 1824.
Photograph by W. H. Jackson, U. S. Geol. Survey.]
But it was not as material for picture making that the bison became of
greatest value, it was as a meat supply to the trapper, the trader, and
the traveller generally upon the bosom of that wide expanse of rolling
prairie that so resembled the great salt ocean itself. As Butler[9]
describes it,
"the unending vision of sky and grass, the dim, distant, and
ever shifting horizon; the ridges that seem to be rolled upon one
another in motionless torpor; the effect of sunrise and sunset, of
night narrowing the vision to nothing, and morning only expanding
it to a shapeless blank, ... and above all the sense of lonely,
unending distance which comes to the _Voyageur_ when day after day
has gone by, night has closed, and morning dawned upon his onward
progress under the same ever-moving horizon of grass and sky."
No wonder the moment buffalo were first sighted by the anxious caravan,
a joyful cry went up, equivalent, as Irving says, to the cry of, "A
sail, a sail!" at sea. All was commotion on the instant, and everybody
prepared for the hunt. Thenceforward, as long as buffalo were near,
hunger held no terrors on that boundless plain that now our limited
express so contemptuously spurns beneath its throbbing steel, as the
ennuied lady sits wearisome at the window gazing with disdain on those
blood-bathed reaches of country, so full of thrilling story and history,
a bill of fare in her hand that would have driven the old voyageur to
distraction.
[Illustration: Canyon of Lodore—Green River.
Canyons of this Character were almost Continuous from a few Miles
below the Union Pacific Railway Crossing.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.]
Yet buffalo meat could not have been less delicious to the appetite
of the plains traveller. It not only furnished food for the moment,
but dried, or dried and pounded and mixed with the rendered tallow,
sometimes including berries, it made _pemmican_,[10] which could
be kept a long time, and which formed the basis of the supplies for
long expeditions and for winter consumption. The meat from old bulls
was often tough, but that from a fat cow was always delicious, and
the marrow!—well, that was a dish fit to set before a king. The Hon.
Grantley F. Berkley[11] of England was not exactly a king, unless we
elevate him as far above the Americans as he thought himself to be, but
he appreciated marrow in 1859 when he honoured the great plains by his
presence.
"No man [he exclaims] can guess what marrow amounts to until he
has been to the Far West.... The bone was brought to table in its
full length, and they had some way of hitting it with an axe which
opened one side only, like the lid of a box. The bone then, when
this lid was removed, exposed in its entire length a regular white
roll of unbroken marrow, beautifully done. When hot, as the lid
had kept it, and put on thin toast, it was perfection."
Another part that was particularly delicious was the hump or rather
the hump-ribs; and so too was the tongue. Still another tidbit was the
meat along either side of the loin, so that altogether living was high
on the rolling prairie as long as buffalo held out. Frequently the
traveller became so pampered by these luxuries that he spurned all but
the daintiest parts and thought nothing of killing a cow simply for the
marrow or for the tongue.
The poor beast deserved better treatment than it got; indeed, the only
treatment was a dose of lead on sight, even when no meat was needed.
The Amerinds often killed the bison recklessly before the arrival of
the European, yet the herds would have resisted all such inroads. But
when the white man came he quickly gave the native points in the game
of useless destruction. The buffalo range immediately was transformed
into a vast slaughter-house, and the carcasses were left to rot and dry
under the western sun. And the more civilised the hunter—that is, the
more unaccustomed to the frontier—the greater the waste of bison life
at his hands. _More than sixteen thousand_ were shot for sport alone,
on the plains of Kansas and Colorado, in 1871. The sportsmen killed all
sizes and ages, pell-mell, just to kill and to ride away at headlong
speed like escaped madmen, never stopping a moment even for the tongues.
Everywhere the carcasses of wantonly slain buffalo in disgusting masses
of putrefaction were lying over hill and dale.[12] They enjoyed the
bison's terror and agony, and with the improved breech-loader death was
dealt in a steady stream, easily and at little cost. It was grand sport!
"Some of our bullets are telling; you can hear them crack on
his hide. There is a red spot now, not bigger than the point of
one's finger, opposite a lung, and drops of blood trickle with
the saliva from his jaws.... He is bleeding internally.... Now he
stands sullen glaring at us. The wounds look like little points
of red paint, put deftly on his shaggy hide.... The large eyes
roll and swell with pain and fury.... See him blow the blood from
his nostrils. The drops scatter like red-hot shot around him,
seeming to hiss in globules of fury, as they spatter upon the dry
grass."[13]
[Illustration: Head of Bison Bull.
Specimen Shot by Theodore Roosevelt. Dec. 17, 1883.
(From Roosevelt's _Hunting Trips of a Ranchman_.)]
When finally the railways began to push across the plains, passengers
would amuse themselves by shooting buffalo from the windows. The animals
had a habit of trying to cross the track ahead of the engine, and
sometimes would rush beside the train a long distance, for in the early
days trains had to run slowly, thus giving passengers the opportunity.
If the train did not stop, the herd would perhaps butt up against it,
so the engineers learned to stand still, and, with due respect, wait
for the bison to pass. When wounded, they became dangerous, especially
the vigorous bulls, and the novice then had to look sharp for his own
life, like the _matador_ in the bull-ring.
The advance of one of the enormous herds was a terrific sight. Great
clouds of dust rolled up, there was bellowing and bawling, and the
thunder of the thousand hoof-beats on the hard ground. The herd came as
one animal, sweeping everything before it as an avalanche descends some
precipice in the Alps. "Their lion-like fronts and dangling beards—their
open mouths and hanging tongues—as they come puffing like a locomotive
engine at every bound do at first make the blood settle a little heavy
about the heart." Woe to the caravan or horseman who failed to evade
this resistless approach! The forward animals were borne ahead by the
pressure from behind, and the mass swept on like some tremendous flood.
Should a river or other obstacle come in the way there was no halt.
Whole herds were sometimes dashed to death over some precipice, or
drowned in a river where quicksand prevented fording or swimming. Four
thousand once crossed the Platte when it was a foot or two deep and full
of quicksand. The animals in the lead mired, but those behind prevented
their return, and rushing on over the ones already entangled in the
fatal sands, themselves fell in, till finally the bed of the stream,
nearly half a mile wide, was covered with dead and dying buffalo,
two thousand, at least, having been killed in the attempt to cross.
Gregg[14] asserts that any herd was easily turned aside, but others
give a different opinion, and judging from all the data, it seems that
Gregg's experience in this particular must have been unusual.
[Illustration: Buffalo Chase.
After Catlin.
From _Smithsonian Report_, 1885.]
Hunting was done by several methods; first, following along the
outskirts of a herd on a trained and fleet horse and "cutting out" an
animal to shoot; or, by "still" hunting—that is, creeping up to a herd
unobserved and picking animals off while feeding; or by the surround;
or the drive. The natives were expert in all methods. In the surround
they closed in large numbers on a herd and at a given signal all began
to shoot. They used the bow and arrow and the spear, and also firearms
when they finally acquired them. They were astonishingly expert with
the bow, singling out their animal while riding full speed and sending
an arrow entirely through the victim. Sometimes the arrow would also
kill a calf or another buffalo before ceasing its flight. The spear
was skilfully used, and it is said an Amerind would ride alongside a
cow allowing his spear to rest on its back till it became accustomed
to it and then he would thrust the weapon into the vitals and deftly
withdraw it, all without even slackening his horse's speed, the horse
being trained to guide by the movement of his rider. Large numbers
were captured by building a sort of corral with wing-like sides of
bushes fifty feet apart and a mile or two long, or more, leading to the
entrance. The hunters closed in gradually on a herd and drove them into
the corral, other men being stationed behind the bushes to frighten the
buffalo. Hind describes vividly his visit to one of these scenes[15]:
"A sight most horrible and disgusting broke upon us as we ascended
a sand dune overhanging the little dell in which the pound was
built. Within a circular fence 120 feet broad, constructed of
the trunks of trees, laced with withes together and braced by
outside supports, lay tossed in every conceivable position, over
two hundred dead buffalo. From old bulls to calves of three months
old, animals of every age were huddled together in all the forced
attitudes of violent death. Some lay on their backs, with eyes
starting from their heads, and tongue thrust out through clotted
gore. Others were impaled on the horns of the old and strong bulls.
Others again, which had been tossed, were lying with broken backs
two and three deep. One little calf hung suspended on the horns of
a bull which had impaled it in the wild race round and round the
pound. The Indians looked upon the dreadful and sickening scene
with evident delight."
This seems like great slaughter, and so it was, but compared with the
white man out after tongues and hides it was as a raindrop to Shoshone
Falls.
[Illustration: Character of Buffalo Range in Green River Valley.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.]
Another way was to take advantage of the blind impetuosity of the charge
of a herd and lead it over the brink of a precipice. A man holding upon
himself a buffalo skin with head and horns, and running before the herd
toward the precipice, thus induced the buffalo to follow, as they took
him to be one of themselves. At the brink the man secured himself in
some safe nook, while the herd, forced by the rush from behind, fell
over the cliff and were dashed to death. The hunters then took what they
wished and left the rest to the wolves.
The fur companies about 1835, when the beaver began to fail and they
found their next mainstay in buffalo robes, annually sent to market
about a hundred thousand. Add to this a greater number killed by all
parties for various purposes, and it is reasonable to estimate the
number yearly destroyed at not less than a quarter of a million. When
the value of robes fell off, the buffalo was killed for hides and
tallow. Eventually the price of hides fell to no more than one dollar
apiece, delivered in Leavenworth. Made into leather, the bison hides
could not compare with those of domestic cattle. It was soft and spongy
and not adapted for shoe, for sole, or for harness leather. Large
quantities were at one time finished by American tanners, but were
chiefly used for making horse collars. A good deal was exported to Great
Britain. The process of tanning was the same as for ordinary leather.
But no method of tanning robes with the hair on could equal that of the
natives, and this was admitted by the best American tanners, who turned
out few robes for this reason. The Amerind method was first to scrape
off the superfluous flesh with a sort of bone adze, the skin being
either stretched on a frame or pegged out on the ground. When dry the
surface was rubbed and scraped again and then covered with the brains
and rolled up flesh side in for three or four days, the brains of the
animal being sufficient for its own hide. Then it was soaked in water
and softened by working and rubbing, thoroughly smoked over a fire of
rotten wood, and finally rubbed down to a finish. A large hide was often
split in two for convenience in dressing and then sewed together after
completion of the tanning process.
One hardly thinks of Washington Irving as a sportsman and buffalo
hunter, yet he was out on the plains in 1832 gaily charging after
buffalo with pistols of the old priming-pan pattern, for breech-loaders
were not yet in use, and many of the early trappers had only the old
flint-lock. It was the breech-loading repeater and canned goods that
finished the buffalo.
"There is a mixture of the awful and the comic [says Irving] in the
look of these huge animals as they bear their great bulk forwards
with an up-and-down motion of the unwieldy head and shoulders;
their tail cocked up like the cue of Pantaloon in a pantomime, the
end whisking about in a fierce yet whimsical style, and their eyes
glaring venomously with an expression of fright and fury."
Borrowing a companion's double-barrelled gun which had one shot
remaining in it, Irving took after the fleeing herd and succeeded in
bringing one down.
"Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent his straying and
advanced to contemplate my victim. I am nothing of a sportsman;
I had been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the magnitude of
the game, and the excitement of an adventurous chase. Now that
the excitement was over I could not but look with commiseration
upon the poor animal that lay struggling and bleeding at my feet.
His very size and importance, which had before inspired me with
eagerness, now increased my compunction."[16]
The scurrying herds sometimes ran close to a caravan and mules, horses,
and oxen have been known to run away with them. The buffalo often
seemed to consider the domestic animals part of their own herd and the
cattle appeared to hold the same opinion of the buffalo. Indeed, there
was little difference except in appearance between a herd of domestic
cattle and one of buffalo. The mingling was prevented by firing into the
buffalo and killing several, which served to turn a small herd, though
frequently their headway was so great they could not be swerved and
the animals were stampeded with them. Then hours of hard work became
necessary to rescue the tame animals, and some never were regained.
The season had much to do with the manageability of a herd, as at some
periods the bulls were extremely fierce.
In summer the bulls would find wet places in the prairie and soon by
ploughing and wallowing would create a considerable puddle, wherein
they would lave themselves and finally emerge coated with mud. Others
would follow till a great depression was the result. These depressions
were called wallows and the plains were covered with them. When filled
up eventually by the washings of the rains they induced, by superior
fertility, a rank growth which distinguished them for a long distance.
[Illustration: Canyon of Desolation—Green River.
A Barrier to the Buffalo's Westward Movement.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.]
The Osages and other tribes at one time wove blankets of buffalo wool
in the same manner that the Navajos to-day weave blankets of sheep's
wool. Many tribes lived by and with the buffalo, having no other source
of food, shelter, or raiment, and this animal became to them the most
important being in creation. It entered into their ceremonials and
into almost every act of their daily life. When no buffalo had been
secured for a time and the camp was growing hungry, the Buffalo Dance
was performed and, as Catlin says, it never failed to bring the buffalo,
because it was invariably continued till buffalo came in sight—a happy
event signalled by a lookout "throwing" his robe. All then rushed to
the hunt. If a white buffalo cow were taken,—and there were occasionally
white buffalo,—the skin was preserved as a sacred object by the Dakota
tribes. It was sheltered under a special sacred tent and carried about
from camp to camp with the greatest reverence.
[Illustration: Mandan Buffalo Dance.
After Catlin. From _Smithsonian Report_, 1885.]
The buffalo was easily domesticated, but the Amerind never seems
to have attempted to tame it, although Gomara states that a certain
tribe living in north-western Mexico about latitude 40°—wherever that
might have been—had herds of tame bison. In the north-west counties
of Virginia early in the nineteenth century a mixed breed was common,
and in the first settlement of the North-west there was also crossing
with European cattle. The cows of this mixed breed that were considered
best for milking were the half bloods down to the quarter or even
eighth of buffalo blood. But it may be assumed that had there been any
considerable gain by the cross the experiment would have been continued.
It seems probable in view of the physique of each animal that the cross
had heavier forequarters and lighter hindquarters than either parent,
and a lighter milk yield, hence it would not be found advantageous.
[Illustration: Buffalo Swimming Missouri River.
After Catlin. From _Smithsonian Report_, 1885.]
The calf, Catlin asserts,[17] could be made to follow a horseman simply
by holding the hand over its eyes and breathing into its nostrils a few
strong breaths. In this way he collected about a dozen, which were fed
at the fort on milk and finally sent down the river to St. Louis as
a present to Choteau. All but one died on the journey. The breathing
operation was not unattended with danger for the calves were vigorous
butters and not lightly to be trifled with. The trapper Pattie, when
crossing the prairies, shot a cow and concluded to take the little
calf alive to camp. So he laid aside his equipment in order the more
easily to catch it, expecting a hot chase. But when he approached the
prospective captive it also approached him, and with the speed and
vigour of a battering ram. Mr. Pattie found himself stretched on the
ground, with the further misfortune of being knocked back again every
time he attempted to rise. He began to suspect that his final hour had
come, when he succeeded in catching the calf by one of its legs, and
killed it with his sheath knife, which was still in his belt.
The pursuit of the buffalo was full of excitement and within reason was
a legitimate sport. Catlin exclaims: "I have always counted myself a
prudent man, yet I have waked (as it were) out of the delirium of the
chase, into which I had fallen as into an agitated sleep, and through
which I had passed as through a delightful dream, where to have died
would have been but to have remained riding on without a struggle or a
pang."
The herds of buffalo were always followed by large numbers of wolves,
both the small coyote variety and the huge grey wolf. There were also
on the prairies in great numbers what the early frontiersmen called
"white bears." These were grizzlies. They were very bold and many a
man was sent to the Happy Hunting Grounds by their ferocious power. No
animal in the world perhaps, taken all in all, was so dangerous. Besides
these there were numerous antelope, elk, deer, sheep, prairie hens,
turkeys, quail, rabbits, and other small game, more or less familiar to
the reader, and, therefore, not requiring an extended description here.
The beaver and the buffalo were the animals of the greatest importance;
and the buffalo deserves a place in our national emblem along with
the beaver, for the bones of the bison may be said to form one of the
corner-stones of the Union.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Gatschet says there is a word in the dialect of Isleta, N. M.,
_Sibúlodd_, meaning buffalo, and it is possible that a native name
for the animal has been mixed up with the name of the first group
of towns, written often _Cevola_. For a description of these towns,
etc., see _Coronado_, by George Parker Winship, A. S. Barnes & Co.
edition.
[5] _Voyages through North America_, Alexander Mackenzie, vol. ii.,
p. 27, Barnes edition.
[6] An excellent monograph on the American Bison, by J. A. Allen,
edited by Dr. Elliott Coues, is contained in the _Report of the U.
S. Geological Survey of Colorado and Adjacent Territories_, by F.
V. Hayden, for 1875. See also works of W. T. Hornaday.
[7] _Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique._
[8] Owned by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy.
[9] _The Wild Northland_, Sir William Francis Butler, K.C.B.
[10] _Pemmican_, from the Cree language—_pimmi_, meat, and _kon_,
fat.
[11] _The English Sportsman in the Western Prairies._
[12] _Buffalo Land_, W. E. Webb.
[13] _Buffalo Land_, p. 304.
[14] _Commerce of the Prairies._
[15] _The Canadian Red River Expedition of 1858_, H. Y. Hind, p.
356.
[16] _Crayon Miscellany. A Tour on the Prairies._
[17] Catlin's _Eight Years_, vol. i., pp. 25, 26.
[Illustration]