Jones says: "The natural life of the Buffalo is much longer than is that of domestic cattle. I frequently saw animals so old their horns had decayed and dropped off, which indicated that they live to a patriarchal age. I saw a Buffalo cow in the zoological garden in Paris which was thirty-one years old, and I am sure I have seen wild ones from ten to fifteen years older." And since the cow begins to breed at three years and has a calf each spring, or every other spring, for about thirty years, the diminution of the Buffalo as a wild race cannot be, as some have claimed, due to infecundity. The "Extermination of the Buffalo" has been so fully and admirably treated by Mr. W. T. Hornaday, in his volume of that name (1889), that I can do little more than condense his account, acknowledge my indebtedness, and add a few later facts. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the Buffalo were cleared out of all the country east of the Mississippi. In 1832, according to Catlin, 150,000 to 200,000 robes were marketed each year, which meant a slaughter of 2,000,000 or perhaps 3,000,000 Buffalo, by the plains Indians. The destruction and waste was already so great that Catlin prophesied the speedy extinction of the Bison. The drain was obviously greater than the natural increase and already the vast herds were visibly shrinking. About 1834 or 1835 they began to diminish very rapidly on the west slope of the Rockies, as Frémont records. But the east slope was the great Buffalo range. Concerning these two areas this famous explorer writes: "The extraordinary abundance of the Buffalo on the east side of the Rocky Mountains, and their extraordinary diminution, will be made clearly evident from the following statement: At any time between the years 1824 and 1836, a traveller might start from any given point south or north in the Rocky Mountain range, journeying by the most direct route to the Missouri River; and, during the whole distance, his road would be always among large bands of Buffalo, which would never be out of his view until he arrived almost within sight of the abodes of civilization. "At this time [1842] the Buffalo occupy but a very little limited space, principally along the eastern base of the Rocky Moun tains, sometimes extending their southern extremity to a considerable distance into the plains between the Platte and Arkansas rivers, and along the eastern frontier of New Mexico, as far south as Texas." Frémont reckoned the annual market of Buffalo robes as 90,000; but robes were collected only during the four winter months; and not more than a third of those killed at the season were skinned, while half of the robes were used at home. Therefore 90,000 robes represented a slaughter of 1,620,000 of Buffalo. But the rate of killing was so much higher in summer that we may calculate the annual kill at 2,000,000 or 2,500,000 a year during these palmy Buffalo days. The herds shrank fast. The Buffalo Indians had been decreased by smallpox, but the white consumers more than made up the shortage. In 1842 Frémont found distress among the Indians along the Platte on account of failure of the Buffalo. In 1852 the Buffalo was so far from the Red River country that Ross considered hunting it a thing of the past. In 1867, the Union Pacific Railway reached Cheyenne, penetrated the heart of the Buffalo country, carrying unnumbered destroyers with it, and split the remaining Buffalo range in two; thenceforth it was customary to speak of the "South herd” and the "North herd," each of which appeared to recognize a boundary in those sinister lines of steel. In 1871, the Santa Fé Railway crossed Kansas, the favorite summer ground of the Southern herd, now reduced to about 4,000,000, according to Hornaday, and then began the great slaughter by the white skinhunters. Taking as a basis the railway statistics of shipments and Colonel Dodge's observations, Mr. Hornaday has calculated the slaughter of the herd as follows: saw was in the Panhandle of Texas. I came on in the May of 1886; I was driving a bunch of horses from Coldwater to Buffalo Springs, and when thirty-five miles east of Buffalo Springs, saw the Buffalo herd about three miles off. I knew at once they were Buffalo, because they were all of one color. I left the horses with the other man, as all he needed was a guide to this place, and the next day on returning, I saw them again about fifteen miles farther east. I rode in among them, some were lying down and some were grazing; they seemed about 200. There were only six little calves. As soon as they saw me they bunched like cattle and kept on milling around. Then one bull made a lead to stampede, but none followed him, so he came back to the bunch. Another as if they were going to surround me. I thought it wiser, then, to fall back and get out of the way. There they strung off after the big leader. I galloped behind trying to rope a calf, but the mother turned on me. I had no gun, my horse was tired, so I gave it up. I noticed that in running they pawed with one side low and after a while changed to the other. Then I went on fifteen miles south-east to our camp. A. N. Cranmer was in charge of the camp, which was by a small lake. He said: "This is the only water in this region; they will be certain to come in here before three days.' So we waited, and on the second day the whole herd appeared. Now I had a good chance to count them, there were 186. They drank very heavily and then played about like calves. A num ber of them amused themselves by jumping "In the November of the same year, on the same trail I saw twelve head, and I have never seen one since." The very last individuals that I have knowledge of were four found and killed in 1889, near Buffalo Springs, Texas. The account of it I got from Mr. W. Allen, cowboy, also of Clayton, New Mexico, four years after the event. This ended the last of the Southern stragglers. The great Northern herd was still in existence after the bulk of the Southern was wiped out. A colder winter and hostile Indians were their chief protectors. Hornaday calculated the Northern herd at about 1,500,000; most authors put it much higher. The Indians, he reckons, were then slaughtering them at the rate of 375,000 a year. In 1876 the American troops drove the hostile Indians out of the country, opening the way for the skin hunters. In 1878 the last herd went South from the Saskatchewan and the few scattered bands there were killed off by the Indians in 1879. In 1880 the Southern Pacific Railroad opened a way into the central country of the last great herd, and the Southern story was repeated. Condensing Mr. Hornaday's account, In 1881 the skin hunters shipped out. Many able pens have recorded the service that the Buffalo rendered man; it needs no telling here. His feeding of a quarter of a million and his clothing of twice as many human beings are well known, indeed, but they are ended. Many good men, chief among them Buffalo Jones (Col. C. J. Jones) have made practical efforts to utilize the Bison as a domestic animal. They have above all attracted attention to it, and saved the remnant from extermination. Colonel Jones believes in a hybrid form between the Buffalo and the common cattle. This he calls “Catalo.” It has the advantages of be50,000 ing exceedingly hardy, fearless of blizzards, 40,000 able to paw and root through the snow for grass where ordinary cattle would starve, and above all, produce a robe which, very superior even to that of a Buffalo, is worth as much as the entire ordinary steer. Alaska and Canada are the countries for which these experiments have an especial interest. 1882 66 " 200,000 300 290,300 This was the end of the Northern herd. The last survivors, twenty-eight in number, were killed on the Big Porcupine, in 1886, and mounted by Mr. Hornaday himself, for the National Museum. The only wild ones left are the band preserved in the Yellowstone Park and the herd of Wood a But the Buffalo as a wild animal is gone. The great herds will never again be seen roaming the plains. Who is there of the present generation Map of North America (exclusive of Mexico), after C. S. Sargent. Showing coniferous forest in dark tint, deciduous forest in pale tint, prairies in dotted tint, and treeless plains in white tint. that does not feel profound regret at the thought and ask himself: "Why was I born too late? What would I not give to have seen the Buffalo days and people in their romantic prime?" All the hungry regret that Sir Walter Scott felt over the departed glories of the feudal life is felt by every boy and young man of our country now when he hears of the Buffalo days and the stirring times of the by-gone wildest West. Why was it allowed? Why did not the Government act? And a hundred sad "might have beens" spring forth from hearts that truly feel they lost a wonderful something when the butchers drawn from the dregs of border towns were turned loose to wipe out the great herds that meant so much to all who love wilds and the primitive in life. There is one answer the extermination was absolutely inevitable. The Buffalo ranged the plains that were needed by the outcrowded human swarms of Europe; producing Buffalo was not the best use for those plains; possessed of vast size and strength, and of an obstinate, impetuous disposition, that would stampede in a given line and keep that line to the utter destruction of all obstacles or of himself, the Buffalo was incompatible with any degree of possession by white men and with the higher productivity of the soil. He had to go. He may still exist in small herds in our parks and forest reserves. He may even achieve success as a domestic animal, filling the gaps where the old-time cattle fail. But the Buffalo of the wild plains is gone forever, and we who see those 8111 last the pilot of the iron horse? The reason is simple: it is the easiest and shortest way through the hills that can be selected by long experience and thorough knowledge of the country. This idea has been I worked out for the Buffalo by Mr. A. B. Hulbert, in his "Historic Highways of America." He points out that the Buffalo first planned the route through the Alleghanies, by which the white man entered and possessed the Mississippi Valley. A story of the plains. Freak Buffalo horn found on the Black Plateau. Collected in 1895 by Frank H. Mayer. Redrawn from photograph in Outdoor Life. "It is very wonderful," he says, "that the Buffalo's instinct should have found the very best courses across a con tinent upon whose thousand rivers such great black forests were thickly strung. Yet it did, and the tripod of the white man has proved it, and human intercourse will move constantly on paths first marked by the Buffalo. It is interesting that he found the strategic passageways through the mountains; it is also interesting that the Buffalo marked out the most practical paths between the heads of our rivers, paths that are closely followed today by the Pennsylvania, Baltimore and Ohio, Chesapeake and Ohio, Cleveland, Terminal and Valley, Wabash, and other great railroads. Freak horn from Saskatchewan. times in the glamor of romance can only say: It had to be; he served his time and now his time is past. But there is a lasting monument he leaves behind. Who that knows the West has not seen the game trail grow into an Indian trail and the Indian trail into a pack trail, which again becomes a white man's road, and at "A rare instance of this: the B. & O. R. R., between Grafton and Parkersburg (W. Va.), has followed the trail steadily throughout its course, and when it came to |