Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/75

 summer of 1867, over two thousand buffaloes, out of a herd of about four thousand, lost their lives in the quicksands of the Platte River, near Plum Creek, while attempting to cross. One winter, a herd of nearly a hundred buffaloes attempted to cross a lake called Lac-qui-parle, in Minnesota, upon the ice, which gave way, and drowned the entire herd. During the days of the buffalo it was a common thing for voyagers on the Missouri River to see buffaloes hopelessly mired in the quicksands or mud along the shore, either dead or dying, and to find their dead bodies floating down the river, or lodged on the upper ends of the islands and sand bars.

Such accidents as these, it may be repeated, were due to the great number of animals and the momentum of the moving mass. The forced marches of the great herds were like the flight of a routed army, in which helpless individuals were thrust into mortal peril by the irresistible force of the mass coming behind, which rushes blindly on after their leaders. In this way it was possible to decoy a herd toward a precipice and cause it to plunge over en masse, the leaders being thrust over by their followers, and all the rest following of their own free will, like the sheep who cheerfully leaped, one after another, through a hole in the side of a high bridge because their bell-wether did so. But it is not to be understood that the movement of a great herd, because it was made on a run, necessarily partook of the nature of a stampede in which a herd sweeps forward in a body. The most graphic account that I ever obtained of facts bearing on this point was furnished by Mr. James McNavey, drawn from his experience on the northern buffalo range in 1882. His party reached the range (on Beaver Creek, abont 100 miles south of Glendive) about the middle of November, and found buffaloes already there; in fact they had begun to arrive from the north as early as the middle of October. About the first of December an immense herd arrived from the north. It reached their vicinity one night, about 10 o'clock, in a mass that seemed to spread everywhere. As the hunters sat in their tents, loading cartridges and cleaning their rifles, a low rumble was heard, which gradually increased to "a thundering noise," and some one exclaimed, "There! that's a big herd of buffalo coming in!" All ran out immediately, and hallooed and discharged rifles to keep the buffaloes from running over their tents. Fortunately, the borses were picketed some distance away in a grassy coulée, which the buffaloes did not enter. The herd came at a jog trot, and moved quite rapidly. "In the morning the whole country was black with buffalo." It was estimated that 10,000 head were in sight. One immense detachment went down on to a "flat" and laid down. There it remained quietly, enjoying a long rest, for about ten days. It gradually broke up into small bands, which strolled off in various directions looking for food, and which the hunters quietly attacked. A still more striking event occurred about Christmas time at the same place. For a few days the neighborhood of McNaney's camp had