Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/119



"All the points abore could easily be found in the buffalo, excepting the fifth, and even that is more than filled as to the quality, but not in quantity. Where is the 'old timer' who has not had a cut from the hump or sirloin of a fat buffalo cow in the fall of the year, and where is the one who will not make affidavit that it was the best meat he ever ate? Yes, the fat was very rich, equal to the marrow from the bone of domestic cattle.***

"The great question remained unsolved as to the quantity of meat from the buffalo. I finally heard of a half-breed buffalo in Colorado, and immediately set out to find it. I traveled at least 1,000 miles to find it, and found a five-year-old half-breed cow that has been bred to domestic bulls and had brought forth two calves — a yearling and a sucking calf that gave promise of great results.

"The cow had never been fed, but depended altogether on the range, and when I saw her, in the fall of 1886, I estimated her weight at 1,800 pounds. She was a brindle, and had a handsome robe even in September; she had as good hind quarters as ordinary cattle; her fore parts were heavy and resembled the buffalo, yet not near so much of the hump. The offspring showed but very little of the buffalo, yet they possessed a woolly coat, which showed clearly that they were more than domestic cattle.***

"What we can rely on by having one-fourth, one-half, and threefourths breeds might be analyzed as follows:

"We can depend upon a race of cattle unequaled in the world for hardiness and durability; a good meat-bearing animal; the best and only fur-bearing animal of the bovine race; the animal always found in a storm where it is overtaken by it; a race of cattle so clannish as never to separate and go astray; the animal that can always have free range, as they exist where no other animal can live; the animal that can water every third day and keep fat, ranging from 20 to 30 miles from water; in fact, they are the perfect animal for the plains of North America. One-fourth breeds for Texas, one-half breeds for Colorado and Kausas, and three-fourths breeds for more northern country, is what will soon be sought after more than any living animal. Then we will never be confronted with dead carcasses from starvation, exhaustion, and lack of nerve, as in years gone by."

The bison as a beast of burden. — On account of the abundance of horses for all purposes throughout the entire country, oxen are so [sic]seldem used they almost constitute a curiosity. There never has existed a necessity to break buffaloes to the yoke and work them like domestic oxen, and so few experiments have been made in this direction that reliable data on this subject is almost wholly wanting. While at Miles City, Mont., I heard of a German "granger" who worked a small farm in the Tongue River Valley, and who once had a pair of cow buffaloes trained