Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/71

Rh robes for the market, only the cows and calves. They selected only the choice cuts of the meat, and left the great bodies for the wolves and other varments. They could tan only the skins of cows and calves for clothing and for tepee covers. It was a sickening sight to pass over the place of slaughter, and thus see hundreds of bodies, with only tongues and choice cuts and skins taken. American hunters were equally sacrificial. Half a century later the writer rode over the same land and saw Indians, all across the region, with carts and pack ponies gathering up bones of the buffalo. Passing stations along the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads, one passes ricks of bones half a mile long on each side, and as high as the tops of the cars, waiting for shipment East as fertilizers, and horn handles for knives and other uses in the arts. Only two living wild herds of buffalo are now reported, one small one in Texas, and one carefully protected by the government in Yellowstone Park. It would have been wise and humane had they been protected sooner by the strong arm of the law.

But it was the great good fortune to our missionaries to meet the buffalo herds. They started out poorly provided, and would soon have been in distress, for they had added three Nez Perces Indian boys to their company, and the