“The buffalo are not yet extinct in the Northwest. There are still some stray ones on the prairies away to the south of this, but they must be very few. I am unable to find any one who has personal knowledge of the killing of one during the last two years, though I have since the receipt of your letter questioned a good many half-breeds on the subject. In our district of Athabasca, along the Salt River, there are still a few wood buffalo killed every year, but they are fast diminishing in numbers and are also becoming very shy.”
In his “Manitoba and the Great Northwest” Prof. John Macoun has this to say regarding the presence of the wood buffalo in the region referred to:
“The wood buffalo, when I was on the Peace River in 1875, were confined to the country lying between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers north of latitude 57°30′, or chiefly in the Birch Hills. They were also said to be in some abundance on the Salt and Hay Rivers, running into the Save River north of Peace River. The herds thirteen years ago [now nineteen] were supposed to number about one thousand, all told. I believe many still exist, as the Indians of that region eat fish, which are much easier procured than either buffalo or moose, and the country is much too difficult for white men.”
All this evidence, when carefully considered, resolves itself into simply this and no more: The only evidence in favor of the existence of any live buffaloes between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers is in the form of very old rumors, most of them nearly fifteen years old; time enough for the Indians to have procured fire-arms in abundance and killed all those buffaloes two or three times over.
Mr. Miller Christy takes “the mean of the estimates,” and assumes that there are now about five hundred and fifty buffaloes in the region named. If we are to believe in the existence there of any stragglers his estimate is a fair one, and we will gladly accept it. The total is therefore as follows:
Number of American bison running wild and unprotected on January 1, 1889.
In the Pan-handle of Texas 25 In Colorado 20 In southern Wyoming 26 In the Musselshell country, Montana 10 In western Dakota 4 Total number in the United States 85 In Athabasca, Northwest Territory (estimated) 550 Total in all North America 635
Add to the above the total number already recorded in captivity (256) and those under Government protection in the Yellowstone Park (200), and the whole number of individuals of Bison americanus now living is 1,091.
From this time it is probable that many rumors of the sudden appearance of herds of buffaloes will become current. Already there have been three or four that almost deserve special mention. The first appeared in March, 1887, when various Western newspapers published a circumstantial account of how a herd of about three hundred buffaloes swam the Missouri River about 10 miles above Bismarck, near the town of Painted Woods, and ran on in a southwesterly direction. A letter of inquiry, addressed to Mr. S. A. Peterson, postmaster at Painted Woods, elicited the following reply:
“The whole rumor is false, and without any foundation. I saw it first in the — newspaper, where I believe it originated.”
In these days of railroads and numberless hunting parties, there is not the remotest possibility of there being anywhere in the United States a herd of a hundred, or even fifty, buffaloes which has escaped observation. Of the eighty-five head still existing in a wild state it may safely be predicted that not even one will remain alive five years hence. A buffalo is now so great a prize, and by the ignorant it is considered so great an honor(!) to kill one, that extraordinary exertions will be made to find and shoot down without mercy the “last buffalo.”
There is no possible chance for the race to be perpetuated in a wild state, and in a few years more hardly a bone will remain above ground to mark the existence of the must prolific mammalian species that ever existed, so far as we know.
VI. Effects of the Extermination
The buffalo supplied the Indian with food, clothing, shelter, bedding, saddles, ropes, shields, and innumerable smaller articles of use and ornament In the United States a paternal government takes the place of the buffalo in supplying all these wants of the red man, and it costs several millions of dollars annually to accomplish the task.
The following are the tribes which depended very largely — some almost wholly — upon the buffalo for the necessities, and many of the luxuries, of their savage life until the Government began to support them:
Sioux 30,561 Crow 3,226 Piegan, Blood, and Blackfeet 2,026 Cheyenne 3,477 Gros Ventres 856 Arickaree 517 Mandan 283 Bannack and Shoshone 2,001 Nez Percé 1,460 Assinniboine 1,688 Kiowas and Comanches 2,756 Arapahoes 1,217 Apache 332 Ute 978 Omaha 1,160 Pawnee 998 Winnebago 1,222 Total 54,758
This enumeration (from the census of 1886) leaves entirely out of consideration many thousands of Indians living in the Indian Territory and other portions of the Southwest, who drew an annual supply of meat and robes from the chase of the buffalo, notwithstanding the fact that their chief dependence was upon agriculture.
The Indians of what was once the buffalo country are not starving and freezing, for the reason that the United States Government supplies them regularly with beef and blankets in lieu of buffalo. Does any one imagine that the Government could not have regulated the killing of buffaloes, and thus maintained the supply, for far less money than it now costs to feed and clothe those 54,758 Indians!
How is it with the Indians of the British Possessions to-day?
Prof. John Maconn writes as follows in his “Manitoba and the Great Northwest,” page 342:
“During the last three years [prior to 1883] the great herds have been kept south of our boundary, and, as the result of this, our Indians have been on the verge of starvation. When the hills were covered with countless thousands [of buffaloes] in 1877, the Blackfeet were dying of starvation in 1879.”
During the winter of 1886-’87, destitution and actual starvation prevailed to an alarming extent among certain tribes of Indians in the Northwest Territory who once lived bountifully on the buffalo. A terrible tale of suffering in the Athabasca and Peace River country has recently (1888) come to the minister of the interior of the Canadian government, in the form of a petition signed by the bishop of that diocese, six clergymen and missionaries, and several justices of the peace. It sets forth that “owing to the destruction of game, the Indians, both last winter and last summer, have been in a state of starvation. They are now in a complete state of destitution, and are utterly unable to provide themselves with clothing, shelter, ammunition, or food for the coming winter.” The petition declares that on account of starvation, and consequent cannibalism, a party of twenty-nine Cree Indians was reduced to three in the winter of 1886.[77] Of the Fort Chippewyan Indians, between twenty and thirty starved to death last winter, and the death of many more was hastened by want of food and by famine diseases. Many other Indians — Crees, Beavers, and Chippewyans — at almost all points where there are missions or trading posts, would certainly have starved to death but for the help given them by the traders and missionaries at those places. It is now declared by the signers of the memorial that scores of families, having lost their heads by starvation, are now perfectly helpless, and during the coming winter must either starve to death or eat one another unless help comes. Heart-rending stories of suffering and cannibalism continue to come in from what was once the buffalo plains.
If ever thoughtless people were punished for their reckless improvidence, the Indians and half-breeds of the Northwest Territory are now paying the penalty for the wasteful slaughter of the buffalo a few short years ago. The buffalo is his own avenger, to an extent his remorseless slayers little dreamed he ever could be.
77
It was the Cree Indians who used to practice impounding buffaloes, slaughtering a penful of two hundred head at a time with most fiendish glee, and leaving all but the very choicest of the meat to putrefy.