<p><SPAN name="ii_iii_b_6" id="ii_iii_b_6"></SPAN>6. <i>Statistics of the slaughter.</i>—The most careful and reliable
estimate ever made of results of the slaughter of the southern buffalo
herd is that of Col. Richard Irving Dodge, and it is the only one I know
of which furnishes a good index of the former size of that herd.
Inasmuch as this calculation was based on actual statistics,
supplemented by personal observations and inquiries made in that region
during the great slaughter, I can do no better than to quote Colonel
Dodge almost in full.<SPAN name="fnanchor_66_66" id="fnanchor_66_66"></SPAN><SPAN href="#footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</SPAN></p>
<p>The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad furnished the following
statistics of the buffalo product carried by it during the years 1872,
1873, and 1874:</p>
<h4><i>Buffalo product.</i></h4>
<div class="center">
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="Buffalo product">
<tr><td align="center">Year.</td><td align="center">No. of skins carried.</td><td align="center">Meat carried.</td><td align="center">Bone carried.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center"> </td><td> </td><td align="center">Pounds.</td><td align="center">Pounds.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="center"><tt>1872</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>165,721</tt></td><td align="right">…</td><td align="right"><tt>1,135,300</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="center"><tt>1873</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>251,443</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>1,617,600</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>2,743,100</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="center"><tt>1874</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>42,289</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>632,800</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>6,914,950</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">Total</td><td align="right"><tt>459,453</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>2,250,400</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>10,793,350</tt></td></tr>
</table></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page_499"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The officials of the Kansas Pacific and Union Pacific railroads either
could not or would not furnish any statistics of the amount of the
buffalo product carried by their lines during this period, and it became
necessary to proceed without the actual figures in both cases. Inasmuch
as the Kansas Pacific road cuts through a portion of the buffalo country
which was in every respect as thickly inhabited by those animals as the
region traversed by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé, it seemed
absolutely certain that the former road hauled out fully as many hides
as the latter, if not more, and its quota is so set down. The Union
Pacific line handled a much smaller number of buffalo hides than either
of its southern rivals, but Colonel Dodge believes that this, “with the
smaller roads which touch the buffalo region, taken together, carried
about as much as either of the two principal buffalo roads.”</p>
<p>Colonel Dodge considers it reasonably certain that the statistics
furnished by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé road represent only
one-third of the entire buffalo product, and there certainly appears to
be good ground for this belief. It is therefore in order to base further
calculations upon these figures.</p>
<p>According to evidence gathered on the spot by Colonel Dodge during the
period of the great slaughter, one hide sent to market in 1872
represented three dead buffaloes, in 1873 two, and in 1874 one hundred
skins delivered represented one hundred and twenty-five dead animals.
The total slaughter by white men was therefore about as below:</p>
<div class="center">
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="hides shipped">
<tr><td align="center">Year.</td><td align="center">Hides shipped by<br/>A., T. and S. F.<br/>railway.</td><td align="center">Hides shipped by<br/>other roads, same<br/>period (estimated).</td><td align="center">Total number<br/>of buffaloes<br/>utilized.</td><td align="center">Total number<br/>killed and<br/>wasted.</td><td align="center">Total of buffaloes<br/>slaughtered<br/>by whites.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="right"><tt>1872</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>165,721</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>331,442</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>497,163</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>994,326</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>1,491,489</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="right"><tt>1873</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>251,443</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>502,886</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>754,329</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>754,329</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>1,508,658</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="right"><tt>1874</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>42,289</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>84,578</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>126,867</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>31,716</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>158,583</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">Total</td><td align="right"><tt>459,453</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>918,906</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>1,378,359</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>1,780,481</tt></td><td align="right"><tt>3,158,730</tt></td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>During all this time the Indians of all tribes within striking distance
of the herds killed an immense number of buffaloes every year. In the
summer they killed for the hairless hides to use for lodges and for
leather, and in the autumn they slaughtered for robes and meat, but
particularly robes, which were all they could offer the white trader in
exchange for his goods. They were too lazy and shiftless to cure much
buffalo meat, and besides it was not necessary, for the Government fed
them. In regard to the number of buffaloes of the southern herd killed
by the Indians, Colonel Dodge arrives at an estimate, as follows:</p>
<p>“It is much more difficult to estimate the number of dead buffalo
represented by the Indian-tanned skins or robes sent to market. This
number varies with the different tribes, and their greater or less
contact with the whites. Thus, the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas of
the <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page_500"></SPAN></span>southern plains, having less contact with whites, use skins for
their lodges, clothing, bedding, par-fléches, saddles, lariats, for
almost everything. The number of robes sent to market represent only
what we may call the foreign exchange of these tribes, and is really not
more than one-tenth of the skins taken. To be well within bounds I will
assume that one robe sent to market by these Indians represents six dead
buffaloes.</p>
<p>“Those bands of Sioux who live at the agencies, and whose peltries are
taken to market by the Union Pacific Railroad, live in lodges of cotton
cloth furnished by the Indian Bureau. They use much civilized clothing,
bedding, boxes, ropes, etc. For these luxuries they must pay in robes,
and as the buffalo range is far from wide, and their yearly ‘crop’
small, more than half of it goes to market.”</p>
<p>Leaving out of the account at this point all consideration of the
killing done north of the Union Pacific Railroad, Colonel Dodge’s
figures are as follows:</p>
<h4><i>Southern buffaloes slaughtered by southern Indians.</i></h4>
<div class="center">
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="indians">
<tr><td align="center">Indians.</td><td align="center">Sent to market.</td><td align="center">No. of dead buffaloes represented.</td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and other Indians<br/> whose robes go over the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad</td><td align="center"><tt>19,000</tt></td><td align="center"><tt>114,000</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Sioux at agencies, Union Pacific Railroad</td><td align="center"><tt>10,000</tt></td><td align="center"><tt> 16,000</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Total slaughtered per annum</td><td align="center"><tt>29,000</tt></td><td align="center"><tt>130,000</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Total for the three years 1872-1874</td><td><tt>…</tt></td><td align="center"><tt>390,000</tt></td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>Reference has already been made to the fact that during those years an
immense number of buffaloes were killed by the farmers of eastern Kansas
and Nebraska for their meat. Mr. William Mitchell, of Wabaunsee, Kansas,
stated to the writer that “in those days, when buffaloes were plentiful
in western Kansas, pretty much everybody made a trip West in the fall
and brought back a load of buffalo meat. Everybody had it in abundance
as long as buffaloes remained in any considerable number. Very few skins
were saved; in fact, hardly any, for the reason that nobody knew how to
tan them, and they always spoiled. At first a great many farmers tried
to dress the green hides that they brought back, but they could not
succeed, and finally gave up trying. Of course, a great deal of the meat
killed was wasted, for only the best parts were brought back.”</p>
<p>The Wichita (Kansas) <i>World</i> of February 9, 1889, contains the following
reference:</p>
<p>“In 1871 and 1872 the buffalo ranged within 10 miles of Wichita, and
could be counted by the thousands. The town, then in its infancy, was
the headquarters for a vast number of buffalo-hunters, who plied their
occupation vigorously during the winter. The buffalo were killed <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page_501"></SPAN></span>
principally for their hides, and daily wagon trains arrived in town
loaded with them. Meat was very cheap in those days; fine, tender
buffalo steak selling from 1 to 2 cents per pound. * * * The business
was quite profitable for a time, but a sudden drop in the price of hides
brought them down as low as 25 and 50 cents each. * * * It was a very
common thing in those days for people living in Wichita to start out in
the morning and return by evening with a wagon load of buffalo meat.”</p>
<p>Unquestionably a great many thousand buffaloes were killed annually by
the settlers of Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and
the mountain Indians living west of the great range. The number so slain
can only be guessed at, for there is absolutely no data on which to
found an estimate. Judging merely from the number of people within reach
of the range, it may safely be estimated that the total number of
buffaloes slaughtered annually to satisfy the wants of this
heterogeneous element could not have been less than fifty thousand, and
probably was a much higher number. This, for the three years, would make
one hundred and fifty thousand, and the grand total would therefore be
about as follows:</p>
<h4><i>The slaughter of the southern herd.</i></h4>
<div class="center">
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary="killed by professionals">
<tr><td align="left">Killed by “professional” white hunters in 1872, 1873, and 1874 </td><td align="right"><tt>3,158,730</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Killed by Indians, same period</td><td align="right"><tt>390,000</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Killed by settlers and mountain Indians</td><td align="right"><tt>150,000</tt></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left">Total slaughter in three years</td><td align="right"><tt>3,098,730</tt></td></tr>
</table></div>
<p>These figures seem incredible, but unfortunately there is not the
slightest reason for believing they are too high. There are many men now
living who declare that during the great slaughter they each killed from
twenty-five hundred to three thousand buffaloes every year. With
thousands of hunters on the range, and such possibilities of slaughter
before each, it is, after all, no wonder that an average of nearly a
million and a quarter of buffaloes fell each year during that bloody
period.</p>
<p>By the close of the hunting season of 1875 the great southern herd had
ceased to exist. As a body, it had been utterly annihilated. The main
body of the survivors, numbering about ten thousand head, fled
southwest, and dispersed through that great tract of wild, desolate, and
inhospitable country stretching southward from the Cimarron country
across the “Public Land Strip,” the Pan-handle of Texas, and the Llano
Estacado, or Staked Plain, to the Pecos River. A few small bands of
stragglers maintained a precarious existence for a few years longer on
the headwaters of the Republican River and in southwestern Nebraska,
near Ogalalla, where calves were caught alive as late as 1885. Wild
buffaloes were seen in southwestern Kansas for the last time in 1886,
and the two or three score of individuals still living in the Canadian
River country of the Texas Pan-handle are the last wild survivors of the
great Southern herd.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page_502"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>The main body of the fugitives which survived the great slaughter of
1871-’74 continued to attract hunters who were very “hard up,” who
pursued them, often at the risk of their own lives, even into the
terrible Llano Estacado. In Montana in 1886 I met on a cattle ranch an
ex-buffalo-hunter from Texas, named Harry Andrews, who from 1874 to 1876
continued in pursuit of the scattered remnants of the great southern
herd through the Pan-handle of Texas and on into the Staked Plain
itself. By that time the market had become completely overstocked with
robes, and the prices received by Andrews and other hunters was only 65
cents each for cow robes and $1.15 each for bull robes, delivered on the
range, the purchaser providing for their transportation to the railway.
But even at those prices, which were so low as to make buffalo killing
seem like downright murder, Mr. Andrews assured me that he “made big
money.” On one occasion, when he “got a stand” on a large bunch of
buffalo, he fired one hundred and fifteen shots from one spot, and
killed sixty-three buffaloes in about an hour.</p>
<p>In 1880 buffalo hunting as a business ceased forever in the Southwest,
and so far as can be ascertained, but one successful hunt for robes has
been made in that region since that time. That occurred in the fall and
winter of 1887, about 100 miles north of Tascosa, Texas, when two
parties, one of which was under the leadership of Lee Howard, attacked
the only band of buffaloes left alive in the Southwest, and which at
that time numbered about two hundred head. The two parties killed
fifty-two buffaloes, of which ten skins were preserved entire for
mounting. Of the remaining forty-two, the heads were cut off and
preserved for mounting and the skins were prepared as robes. The
mountable skins were finally sold at the following prices: Young cows,
$50 to $60; adult cows, $75 to $100; adult bull, $150. The unmounted
heads sold as follows: Young bulls, $25 to $30; adult bulls, $50; young
cows, $10 to $12; adult cows, $15 to $25. A few of the choicest robes
sold at $20 each, and the remainder, a lot of twenty eight, of prime
quality and in excellent condition, were purchased by the Hudson’s Bay
Fur Company for $350.</p>
<p>Such was the end of the great southern herd. In 1871 it contained
certainly no fewer than three million buffaloes, and by the beginning of
1875 its existence as a herd had utterly ceased, and nothing but
scattered, fugitive bands remained.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.