Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1896 — KILLING THE BUFFALO. [ARTICLE]

KILLING THE BUFFALO.

UNPRECEDENTED SLAUGHTER OF THIS AMERICAN ANIMAL Upward of 6,000,000 in an ’lncredibly Short Space of Time. Not Over 1,000 Now Running Wild in North America. William T. Hornaday, the Superintendent of the National Zoological Park, at Washington, a student and hunter of the buffalo in the old days has interested himself in the question of preventing their extermination, and has done what he could to bring the matter to the attention of Congreve. Unfortunately, all attempts at legislation for the protection of this animal have been in vain, and the result is that upward of (5,000,000 were slaughtered in an incredibly short space of time—r arly 4.000.000 killed in three years—until now there are not over 1,000 of these animals running wild in North America. Such a wanton destruction of a valuable beast, purely and distinctively American in its character, is unprecedented in the history of the world. The familiarity of the Americans with the buffalo seems to have bred contempt, for the great number of these animals lias led the people to think of them as animals which were valuable only for what their skins would bring in the market. But owing to the vast destruction of the herds, and the fact that the reduced number has increased the price of the skins and the other products, there lias come a revulsion of popular sentiment in regard to them, and they have become very valuable in the eyes of the general public, and. it is needless to say, in the eyes of those surviving among the old hunters who can now get large sums of money for the robes and skeletons. Of all the quadrupeds that have lived upon the earth, Mr. Hornaday says that probably no other species has ever marshaled such innumerable hosts as those of the American bison. It would have been as easy to count or to estimate the number of leaves in the forest as to calculate the number of buffaloes living at any given time during the history of the species up to 1870. Eveij in South Central Africa, which has always been so prolific in great herds of game, it is probable that all of its quadrupeds taken together on. an equal area would never have more than equaled the total number of buffaloes in this country forty or fifty years ago. To the African hunter such a statement might seem incredible, but Mr. Hornaday says that it is fully warranted by the literature of both branches of the snbject. Mr. John Filson, in 1784, wrote of the Blue Bicks in Kentucky: “The amazing herds of buffalo which resort thither by their size and number fill the traveler with astonishment and terror, especially when he beholds the prodigious roads they have made from all quarters, as if leading to some populous city.” In 1770, where Nashville now stands, were immense numbers of buffaloes and other wild game. The country was black with them. Daniel Boone found vast herds of buffaloes grazing in the valleys of East Tennessee, between the spurs of the Cumberland Mountains. Between the Rocky Mountains and the .States lying along the Mississipppi River and the west from Minnesota to Louisiana, the whole country was one vast buffalo range, inhabited by millions of buffaloes.

A volume could be filled with the records of plainsmen and pioneers who penetrated that vast region in the early part of the century, and who were astounded by the number of buffaloes they observed. Col. Dodge described a herd which he saw on the Arkansas River. According to his recorded observation, the herd extended along the river for a distance of twenty-five miles, which was in reality the width of the vast procession that was moving north and back from the road as far as the eye could reach on both sides. At a low estimate, the ground visible from the road where Col. Dodge was driving, which was covered by the herd, extended for a mile. This would give a strip of country two miles wide and twentyfive long, or a total of fifty square miles covered with buffaloes, averaging, at Cal. Dodge’s estimate, from fifteen to twenty to the acre. Bj- the lesser number, fifteen, it is found that the number actually seen on that day by Col. Dodge was in the neighborhood of 480,000. If the advancing herd had been at paints fifty miles tn length, as it was known to have been in some places, by twenty-five miles in width, and still averaging fifteen head to the acre, it would have contained the enormous number of 12,000,000 head, but, judging from the principles which governed their periodical migrations, the moving mass probably advanced in the shape of .« wedge, which would leave about 4,000,000 as a fair estimate of the actual number of buffaloes in the great southern herd. It is no wonder, therefore, that the men of the West of those days, both white and red, thought it would be impossible to exterminate such a mighty multitude. The Indians of some tribes believed that the buffaloes issuel from the earth continually, and that the supply was inexhaustible; and yet, in four years that southern herd was almost totally extinct. “With such a lesson before our eyes,” said Mr. Hornaday, “confirmed in every detail by living testimony, who will dare to say that there will be an elk, a moose, caribou, mountain goat, mountain sheep, antelope, or black-tail deer left alive in the United States in a wild state fifty years from this date, or even twenty-five?” If in the earlier days before the buffalo’s almost complete extermination, the people had realized the immense money value of the great herd as it existed in 1870, the slaughter could probably have been stopped. At that time, 500,000 head of bulls, young and old, could have been killed every year for a score of years without appreciably diminishing the size of the herd. At Mr. Hornaday’s estimate these could easily have been made to yield various products, worth $5 each, as follows: Robe, $2.50; tongue, 25 cents; meat of hind quarters, $2; bones, horns, and hoofs, 25 cents; total, $5. And the amount annually added to the

wealth of the United States would have been not less than $500,000 on all the robes taken for the market, say 200,000. The (Government could haw? collected a tax of 50 cents each, which would have yielded a sum doubly sufficient to have maintained a force of mounted police fully competent to enforce the laws regulating the slaughter. The American people, it seems, have not yet learned to spend money for the protection of valuable game, and by the time they have learned it. there will be no game to protect. Even despite the enormous waste of raw material that has been shown in the utilization of the buffalo product, the total cash value of all material derived from this source, if it could only be reckoned up would certainly amount to many mill ions of dollars, perhaps $20,000,000 as told.—New York Times.