Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/57

 had a curious and permanent effect on the buffaloes. The overland route followed up the Kansas and Platte Rivers, and thence westward by the North Platte to the South Pass. The buffaloes were soon all driven from this line of travel; and the great herd which had stretched from the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan was permanently divided into two—a northern and a southern herd—which were more and more widely separated by the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. Year by year since, the limits of the range of each division have been contracting under relentless persecution and the encroachments of civilization, until now they are easily circumscribed. The poor beasts have been hunted by the Indians, have been followed incessantly by white men—professional hunters, sportsmen, hide-seekers, and soldiers—who have been afforded easy access to their haunts by the railroads which have penetrated to their ancient pastures, and been given the means of keeping up the hunt by the nearness of the frontier settlements to the resorts of each herd. Enormous destruction has ensued in Kansas and Colorado, and has had the effect to drive the southern division southward and southwestward into Texas, where hunters can not or (on account of Indians) dare not follow them. They are, therefore, just now (1876) afforded temporary rest from persecution; but, unless legal interference be quickly made and strict regulations rigorously enforced, the fate of the buffalo south of the Platte will be a repetition of its history east of the Mississippi—speedy extermination.

As to the northern herd, while twenty years ago buffaloes were accustomed to frequent the whole region between the Missouri River and the forty-ninth parallel, from the western boundary of Dakota to the Rocky Mountains, and even far into their valleys, they are now restricted to the comparatively small area drained by the southern tributaries of the Yellowstone, and northward over the most of Montana to the Missouri. North of the Missouri River almost a separate subdivision of the herd seems to exist, which feeds between longitude 106° and the Rocky Mountains, and northward to the wooded region of the Athabasca and Peace Rivers. Within thirty years they have become extirpated over half of this fertile region north of our boundary, and their numbers, probably, have correspondingly decreased.

It thus appears that in three quarters of a century the buffalo has been compelled to relinquish a habitat, covering a third of the continent, for two regions not greater together than the present Territories of Montana and Dakota; and they were formerly just as numerous over the whole extent as they now are in favored spots within their range. Hence the theory that they have not been so much reduced in numbers, as they have been circumscribed in range and concentrated upon narrow limits, will not hold good. Over much of this great region they were actually killed on the spot, not driven out.