Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/188

 and, if it had, it would have been promptly annihilated by the hungry Blackfeet and Cree Indians, who were declared to be in a half starved condition, through the disappearance of the buffalo, as early as 1879. The great herd that "went north" was utterly extinguished by the white hunters along the Missouri River and the Indians living north of it. The only vestige of it that remained was a band of about two hundred individuals that took refuge in the labyrinth of ravines and creek bottoms that lie west of the Musselshell between Flat Willow and Box Elder Creeks, and another band of about seventy-five which settled in the bad lands between the head of the Big Dry and Big Porcupine Creeks, where a few survivors were found by the writer in 1886. South of the Northern Pacific Railway, a band of about three hundred settled permanently in and around the Yellowstone National Park, but in a very short time every animal outside of the protected limits of the park was killed, and whenever any of the park buffaloes strayed be. round the boundary they too were promptly killed for their heads and hides. At present the number remaining in the park is believed by Captain Harris, the superintendent, to be about two hundred; about one-third of which is due to breeding in the protected territory. In the southeast the fate of that portion of the herd is well known. The herd which at the beginning of the hunting season of 1883 was known to contain about ten thousand head, and ranged in western Dakota, about half way between the Black Hills and Bismarck, between the Moreau and Grand Rivers, was speedily reduced to about one thousand head. Vic. Smith, who was in at the death,” says there were eleven hundred, others say twelve hundred. Just at this juncture (October, 1883) Sitting Bull and his whole band of nearly one thousand braves arrived from the Standing Rock Agency, and in two days' time slaughtered tie entire herd. Vic. Smith and a host of white hunters took part in the killing of this last ten thousand, and he declares that "when we got through the hunt there was not a hoof left. That wound up the buffalo in the Far West, only a stray bull being seen here and there afterwards."

Curiously enough, not even the buffalo hunters themselves were at the time aware of the fact that the end of the hunting season of 1882–83 was also the end of the buffalo, at least as an inhabitant of the plains and a source of revenue. In the autumn of 1883 they nearly all outfitted as usual, often at an expense of many hundreds of dollars, and blithely sought "the range” that had up to that time been so prolific in robes. The end was in nearly every case the same-total failure and bankruptcy. It was indeed hard to believe that not only the millions, but also the thousands, had actually gone, and forever.

I have found it impossible to ascertain definitely the number of robes and hides shipped from the northern range during the last years of the slaughter, and the only reliable estimate I have obtained was made for we, after much consideration and reflection, by Mr. J. N. Davis, of