Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/25

 SNAKE RIVER IN HISTORY half survived the awful ordeal.

17

That we should allow the

capacious maw of oblivion to claim the deeds of our heroic pioneers is a good and sufficient cause to make even the stoutest heart weep. I shall here

make

a few observations relative to the age of Peter H. Burnett, who crossed the the Snake river trails. of many others that the plains in 1843, verifies the statement

Fort Hall bottoms had been a great resort for buffaloes and adds the statement that "We saw the skulls of these animals for the last time at Fort Boise, beyond which point they were

His remark, however, applies to the immigration of that year, for earlier travelers had observed the skulls as far west as the Powder river valley, west of which place I have never heard of any trace of this historic animal. It would appear, therefore, that, when the white man invaded the Old Oregon territory, the buffalo herds were receding toward the east. As a cause of this recession we may, with some degree of certainty, I think, look to the acquisinever seen."

tion of the horse

by the Indian as a primary explanation.

lowing the discovery of the

New World

natives, as early as 1504, struck

dumb

in 1492,

we

Fol-

find the

with amazement upon

the discovery that the Spaniards were transporting their baggage upon the backs of four-legged slaves of the most strange

and wonderful proportions. We find them in Cuba in 1511, in Mexico by 1521 and as far north as Santa Fe, Utah and even Kansas as early as 1542. It is reasonably safe to conclude, therefore, that the horse was in general use among the Coast Indians as early as the beginning of the 17th century. That the recession of the vast buffalo herds began on the southern and western borders of their original feeding grounds, to be followed closely by a general retreat from the Atlantic

By 1832 white men had joined with slope, is equally certain. the Indians, the use of fire arms had become general, and the wanton slaughter was on. In the fall of 1883, I stood on the bank of the Missouri river at old Fort Pierre and watched a steam boat from up river make its landing. Going aboard I observed a consignment of

fifty

tons of buffalo hides and,