Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/304



AVING now quite a respectable amount of peltry on hand, both of our villages started for the fort to purchase winter supplies. We carried upwards of forty packs of beaver, and two thousand four hundred packs of robes, with which we were enabled to make quite an extensive trading. We loitered seven days in the vicinity of the fort; then the villages separated, for the purpose of driving the buffalo back to the Yellow Stone, where they would keep in good condition all winter. This required a considerable force of men, as those animals abounded by the thousand at that time where they are now comparatively scarce, and it is a conclusion forced upon my mind that within half a century the race of buffaloes will be extinguished on this continent. Then farewell to the Red Man! for he must also become extinct, unless he applies himself to the cultivation of the soil, which is beyond the bound of probability. The incessant demand for robes has slain thousands of those noble beasts of the prairie, until the Indians themselves begin to grow uneasy at the manifest diminution, and, as a means of conservation, each nation has adopted the policy of confining to itself the right of hunting on its own ground. They consider that the buffalo belongs to them as their exclusive property; that he was sent to them by the Great Spirit for their subsistence; and when he fails them,