Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/84

 was one of the important factors in his phenomenally swift extermination. He was provokingly slow in comprehending the existence and nature of the dangers that threatened his life, and, like the stupid brute that he was, would very often stand quietly and see two or three score, or even a hundred, of his relatives and companions shot down before his eyes, with no other feeling than one of stupid wonder and curiosity. Neither the noise nor smoke of the still-hunter's rifle, the falling, struggling, nor the final death of his companions conveyed to his mind the idea of a danger to be fled from, and so the berd stood still and allowed the still-hunter to slaughter its members at will.

Like the Indian, and many white men also, the buffalo seemed to feel that their number was so great it could nerer be sensibly diminished. The presence of such a great multitude gave to each of its individuals a feeling of security and mutual support that is very generally found in animals who congregate in great herds. The time was when a band of elk would stand stupidly and wait for its members to be shot down one after another; but it is believed that this was due more to panic than to a lack of comprehension of danger.

The fur seals who cover the “hauling grounds” of St. Paul and St. George Islands, Alaska, in countless thousands, hare even less sense of danger and less comprehension of the slaughter of thousands of their kind, which takes place daily, than had the bison. They allow them. selves to be herded and driven off landwards from the hauling-ground for half a mile to the killing-ground, and, finally, with most cheerful indifference, permit the Aleuts to club their brains out.

It is to be added that whenever and wherever seals or sea-lions in. habit a given spot, with but few exceptions, it is an easy matter to approach individuals of the herd. The presence of au immense number of individuals plainly begets a feeling of security and mutual support. And let not the bison or the seal be blamed for this, for man himself exhibits the same foolish instinct. Who has not met the woman of mature years and full intellectual vigor who is mortally afraid to spend a night entirely alone in her own house, but is perfectly willing to do so, and often does do so without fear, when she can have the company of one small and helpless child, or, what is still worse, three or four of them?

But with the approach of extermination, and the utter breaking up of all the herds, a complete change has been wrought in the character of the bison. At last, but alas! entirely too late, the crack of the rifle and its accompanying puff of smoke conveyed to the slow mind of the bison a sense of deadly danger to himself. At last he recognized man, whether on foot or horseback, or peering at him from a coulée, as his mortal enemy. At last he learned to run. In 1886 we found the scat. tered remnant of the great northern herd the wildest and most difficult animals to kill that we had ever hunted in any country. It had been only through the keenest exercise of all their powers of self preservation that those buffaloes had survived until that late day, and we found