The Extermination of the American BisonHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
History
The Extermination of the American Bison
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
American bison; Wildlife conservation -- United States -- Sources
The latest information I have been able to obtain in regard to the
disappearance of this northern band has been kindly furnished by Prof.
C. A. Kenaston, who in 1881, and also in 1883, made a thorough
exploration of the country between Winnipeg and Fort Edmonton for the
Canadian Pacific Railway Company. His four routes between the two points
named covered a vast scope of country, several hundred miles in width.
In 1881, at Moose Jaw, 75 miles southeast of The Elbow of the South
Saskatchewan, he saw a party of Cree Indians, who had just arrived from
the northwest with several carts laden with fresh buffalo meat. At Fort
Saskatchewan, on the North Saskatchewan River, just above Edmonton, he
saw a party of English sportsmen who had recently been hunting on the
Battle and Red Deer Rivers, between Edmonton and Fort Kalgary, where
they had found buffaloes, and killed as many as they cared to slaughter.
In one afternoon they killed fourteen, and could have killed more had
they been more blood-thirsty. In 1883 Professor Kenaston found the fresh
trail of a band of twenty-five or thirty buffaloes at The Elbow of the
South Saskatchewan. Excepting in the above instances he saw no further
traces of buffalo, nor did he hear of the existence of any in all the
country he explored. In 1881 he saw many Cree Indians at Fort Qu'Appelle
in a starving condition, and there was no pemmican or buffalo meat at
the fort. In 1883, however, a little pemmican found its way to Winnipeg,
where it sold at 15 cents per pound; an exceedingly high price. It had
been made that year, evidently in the mouth of April, as he purchased it
in May for his journey.
The first really alarming impression made on our northern herd was by
the Sioux Indians, who very speedily exterminated that portion of it
which had previously covered the country lying between the North Platte
and a line drawn from the center of Wyoming to the center of Dakota. All
along the Missouri River from Bismarck to Fort Benton, and along the
Yellowstone to the head of navigation, the slaughter went bravely on.
All the Indian tribes of that vast region--Sioux, Cheyennes, Crows,
Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, Assinniboines, Gros Ventres, and
Shoshones--found their most profitable business and greatest pleasure
(next to scalping white settlers) in hunting the buffalo. It took from
eight to twelve buffalo hides to make a covering for one ordinary
teepee, and sometimes a single teepee of extra size required from twenty
to twenty-five hides.
The Indians of our northwestern Territories marketed about seventy-five
thousand buffalo robes every year so long as the northern herd was large
enough to afford the supply. If we allow that for every skin sold to
white traders four others were used in supplying their own wants, which
must be considered a very moderate estimate, the total number of
buffaloes slaughtered annually by those tribes must have been about
three hundred and seventy-five thousand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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