“Horace Greeley estimated the number of buffaloes at five million. I agree with him, only I think there were nearly five times that number. Mr. Greeley passed through herds of them twice. I lived in the heart of the buffalo range for nearly fifteen years. I am told that some recent writer, who has studied the buffalo closely, has placed their number at ninety million, and I think that he is nearer right than I. Brick Bond, a resident of Dodge, an old, experienced hunter, a great shot, a man of considerable intelligence and judgment, and a most reliable man as to truthfulness, says that he killed 1500 buffaloes in seven days, and his highest killing was 250 in one day; and he had to be on the lookout for hostile Indians all the time. He had fifteen “skinners,” and he was only one of many hunters. “Charles Rath and I shipped over 200,000 buffalo hides the first winter the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad reached Dodge City, and I think there were at least as many more shipped from there, besides 200 cars of hind-quarters and two cars of buffalo tongues.” A Kansas newspaper (_Dodge City Times_, August 18th, 1877) remarks: “Dickinson County has a buffalo hunter by the name of Mr. Warnock, who has killed as high as 658 in one winter.—_Edwards County Leader._ “Oh, dear, what a mighty hunter! Ford County has twenty men who each have killed five times that many in one winter. The best on record, however, is that of Tom Nickson, who killed 120 at one stand in forty minutes, and who, from the 15th of September to the 20th of October, killed 2,173 buffaloes.” Colonel Richard I. Dodge, who spent thirty years on the Plains, commenting in 1880 on the value of the buffalo to the Indian, says: “It is almost impossible for a civilized being to realize the value to the Plains Indians of the buffalo. It furnished him with home, food, clothing, bedding, house equipment, almost everything. Without it he is poor as poverty itself, and on the verge of starvation. “Some years, as in 1871, the buffalo appeared to move northward in one immense column, oftentimes from twenty to fifty miles in width, and of unknown depth from front to rear. Other years the northward journey was made in several parallel columns, moving at the same rate and with their numerous flankers covering a width of a hundred or more miles. “During the three years 1872–73–74, at least five millions of buffaloes were slaughtered for their hides. “This slaughter was all in violation of law, and in contravention of solemn treaties made with the Indians, but it was the duty of no special person to put a stop to it. The Indian Bureau made a feeble effort to keep the white hunters out of Indian Territory, but soon gave it up, and these parties spread all over the country, slaughtering the buffalo under the very noses of the Indians.