On the floor, on either side of my fireplace, lie two buffalo skulls.
They are white and weathered, the horns cracked and bleached by the
snows and frosts and the rains and heats of many winters and summers.
Often, late at night, when the house is quiet, I sit before the fire,
and muse and dream of the old days; and as I gaze at these relics of the
past, they take life before my eyes. The matted brown hair again clothes
the dry bone, and in the empty orbits the wild eyes gleam. Above me
curves the blue arch; away on every hand stretches the yellow prairie,
and scattered near and far are the dark forms of buffalo. They dot the
rolling hills, quietly feeding like tame cattle, or lie at ease on the
slopes, chewing the cud and half asleep. The yellow calves are close by
their mothers; on little eminences the great bulls paw the dust, and
mutter and moan, while those whose horns have grown one, two, and three
winters are mingled with their elders.
Not less peaceful is the scene near some river-bank, when the herds come
down to water. From the high prairie on every side they stream into the
valley, stringing along in single file, each band following the deep
trail worn in the parched soil by the tireless feet of generations of
their kind. At a quick walk they swing along, their heads held low. The
long beards of the bulls sweep the ground; the shuffling tread of many
hoofs marks their passing, and above each long line rises a cloud of
dust that sometimes obscures the westering sun.
Life, activity, excitement, mark another memory as vivid as these. From
behind a near hill mounted men ride out and charge down toward the herd.
For an instant the buffalo pause to stare, and then crowd together in a
close throng, jostling and pushing one another, a confused mass of
horns, hair, and hoofs. Heads down and tails in air, they rush away from
their pursuers, and as they race along herd joins herd, till the black
mass sweeping over the prairie numbers thousands. On its skirts hover
the active, nimble horsemen, with twanging bowstrings and sharp arrows
piercing many fat cows. The naked Indians cling to their naked horses as
if the two were parts of one incomparable animal, and swing and yield to
every motion of their steeds with the grace of perfect horsemanship. The
ponies, as quick and skilful as the men, race up beside the fattest of
the herd, swing off to avoid the charge of a maddened cow, and,
returning, dart close to the victim, whirling hither and yon, like
swallows on the wing. And their riders, with the unconscious skill,
grace, and power of matchless archery, are drawing their bows to the
arrow's head, and driving the feathered shaft deep through the bodies of
the buffalo. Returning on their tracks, they skin the dead, then load
the meat and robes on their horses, and with laughter and jest ride
away.
After them, on the deserted prairie, come the wolves to tear at the
carcasses. The rain and the snow wash the blood from the bones, and fade
and bleach the hair. For a few months the skeleton holds together; then
it falls apart, and the fox and the badger pull about the whitening
bones and scatter them over the plain. So this cow and this bull of mine
may have left their bones on the prairie, where I found them and picked
them up to keep as mementos of the past, to dream over, and in such
reverie to see again the swelling hosts which yesterday covered the
plains, and to-day are but a dream.
So the buffalo passed into history. Once an inhabitant of this continent
from the Arctic slope to Mexico, and from Virginia to Oregon, and,
within the memory of men yet young, roaming the plains in such numbers
that it seemed as if it could never be exterminated, it has now
disappeared as utterly as has the bison from Europe. For it is probable
that the existing herds of that practically extinct species, now
carefully guarded in the forests of Grodno, about equal in numbers the
buffalo in the Yellowstone Park; while the wild bison in the Caucasus
may be compared with the "wood" buffalo which survive in the Peace River
district. In view of the former abundance of our buffalo, this parallel
is curious and interesting.
The early explorers were constantly astonished by the multitudinous
herds which they met with, the regularity of their movements, and the
deep roads which they made in traveling from place to place. Many of the
earlier references are to territory east of the Mississippi, but even
within the last fifteen years buffalo were to be seen on the Western
plains in numbers so great that an entirely sober and truthful account
seems like fable. Describing the abundance of buffalo in a certain
region, an Indian once said to me, in the expressive sign-language of
which all old frontiersmen have some knowledge: "The country was one
robe."
Much has been written about their enormous abundance in the old days,
but I have never read anything that I thought an exaggeration of their
numbers as I have seen them. Only one who has actually spent months in
traveling among them in those old days can credit the stories told about
them. The trains of the Kansas Pacific Railroad used frequently to be
detained by herds which were crossing the tracks in front of the
engines; and in 1870, trains on which I was traveling were twice so
held, in one case for three hours. When railroad travel first began on
this road, the engineers tried the experiment of running through these
passing herds; but after their engines had been thrown from the tracks
they learned wisdom, and gave the buffalo the right of way. Two or three
years later, in the country between the Platte and Republican rivers, I
saw a closely massed herd of buffalo so vast that I dared not hazard a
guess as to its numbers; and in later years I have traveled, for weeks
at a time, in northern Montana without ever being out of sight of
buffalo. These were not in close herds, except now and then when alarmed
and running, but were usually scattered about, feeding or lying down on
the prairie at a little distance from one another, much as domestic
cattle distribute themselves in a pasture or on the range. As far as we
could see on every side of the line of march, and ahead, the hillsides
were dotted with dark forms, and the field-glass revealed yet others
stretched out on every side, in one continuous host, to the most distant
hills. Thus was gained a more just notion of their numbers than could be
had in any other way, for the sight of this limitless territory occupied
by these continuous herds was far more impressive than the spectacle of
a surging, terrified mass of fleeing buffalo, even though the numbers
which passed rapidly before the observer's gaze in a short time were
very great.
[Illustration: At Mid-day.