Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/173

 The officials of the Kansas Pacific and Union Pacific railroads either could not or would not furnish any statistics of the amount of the buffalo product carried by their lines during this period, and it became necessary to proceed without the actual figures in both cases. Inasmuch as the Kansas Pacific road cuts through a portion of the buffalo country which was in every respect as thickly inhabited by those animals as the region traversed by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé, it seemed absolutely certain that the former road hauled out fully as many hides as the latter, if not more, and its quota is so set down. The Union Pacific line handled a much smaller number of buffalo bides than either of its southern rivals, but Colonel Dodge believes that this, "with the smaller roads which touch the buffalo region, taken together, carried about as much as either of the two principal buffalo roads."

Colonel Dodge considers it reasonably certain that the statistics furnished by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fê road represent only one-third of the entire buffalo product, and there certainly appears to be good ground for this belief. It is therefore in order to base further calculations upon these figures.

According to evidence gathered on the spot by Colonel Dodge during the period of the great slaughter, one hide sent to market in 1872 rep. resented three dead buffaloes, in 1873 two, and in 1874 one hundred skins delivered represented one hundred and twenty-five dead animals. The total slaughter by white men was therefore about as below:

During all this time the Indians of all tribes within striking distance of the herds killed an immense number of buffaloes every year. In the summer they killed for the hairless hides to use for lodges and for leather, and in the autumn they slaughtered for robes and meat, but particularly robes, which were all they could offer the white trader in exchange for his goods. They were too lazy and shiftless to cure much buffalo meat, and besides it was not necessary, for the Government fed them. In regard to the number of buffaloes of the southern herd killed by the Indians, Colonel Dodge arrives at an estimate, as follows:

"It is much more difficult to estimate the number of dead buffalo represented by the Indian-tanned skins or robes sent to market. This number varies with the different tribes, and their greater or less contact with the whites. Thus, the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas of the