“Ten years ago the Plains Indians had an ample supply of food, and could support life comfortably without the assistance of the Government. Now everything is gone, and they are reduced to the condition of paupers, without food, shelter, clothing, or any of those necessaries of life which came from the buffalo; and without friends, except the harpies, who, under the guise of friendship, feed upon them.” The first trains on the Union Pacific Railway were frequently compelled to stop for one or two days until these immense herds had crossed the tracks. The Missouri River has been known to be filled with buffalo swimming across; a boat descending or ascending the river was compelled to wait a day or two for the herds to pass. Unnumbered thousands were drowned at the time of these crossings. Prairie fires must have destroyed multitudes of these animals. The American bison was very easily approached and killed, and a careful reading of the accounts of buffalo-hunts indicates that there was about as much real sport in the slaughter of these animals as in killing domesticated cattle. In fact, the long-horned Texas steer such as used to range the Southwest forty years ago, would probably afford more sport to men engaged in a “running hunt,” than the buffalo. The latter were heavy, ponderous animals and save when stampeded, could be shot down from ambush. An “oldtimer”, long on the Plains, told me that he frequently killed from fifty to seventy-five buffalo from one stand. He would secret himself on a little bluff, overlooking a ravine where the grass was exceptionally good, and from this vantage-point, using a heavy Sharpes rifle, he shot down one after another. He stated that the bulls would walk up to a fallen animal, smell of the blood, paw the dirt, and perhaps bellow a little, but until the animals got scent of him, they would not move away. Professor William T. Hornaday in the United States National Museum Reports for 1887 and 1889 has given an extended account of the buffalo and its destruction. Catlin has presented us, in earlier years, of a stirring account of a buffalo-hunt. Coming down to later times, General Custer, Colonel William F. Cody and others have pictured the excitement of the buffalo-chase. Colonel Cody, in fifteen months, according to his own admission, slaughtered 4280.[55] He thus obtained the name “Buffalo Bill.” [Illustration: UNITED STATES CAVALRY ATTACKING BLACK KETTLE’S VILLAGE ON THE WASHITA, NOVEMBER 27, 1868 Black Kettle was killed in the fight. Reproduced from Col. Dodge’s “Our Wild Indians” ]