The Last of the Buffaloes.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 8137, 22 January 1895, Page 1

The Last of the Buffaloes.

Hunters know that ■ buffaloes will never unless forced cross the iron of a railroad track, and 5 this fact figured largely in, the, unfortunate woife pjbextef ruination which. these animals have suffered since the Western 'niains halve been hailroadsi. The :grehtest blowi dealt the bison lierdsof the northwest was the completion of the Northern Pacific track. west : from Bismarck to the Rocky Mountains. The road practically divided 1 the herds, and thbh'e to the south were soon swallowed up in the general slaughter waged, by Indians, pot, hide, and ■ tongue hunters; foreign sportsmen, and others who were but to kill anything they saw on ■ sight'. This was during the winter of 1882-83. The buffaloes •to the worth were in many scattered hands, but thefe was one great heard of not less than ;75,000 head, which had-fomid' a refuge in the.trigngle fofmed by the .Mussel-shelli' Missouri, and Yellowstone nvers ih .Moritana; as yet 1 they Had hot 1 been smelled hut ” by either' red or white hunters. But they were as surely doomed us ; though already killed, for the railroad iron cut them off from the southern rangeland the Indians of the tlahaff iah as well as those of our country, barred their retreat into the far north, and so they were hemmed in between' the i two, with ’ : possibility of escape in 1 either- direction. This last herd was completely wiped out of existence in less than four months, •and-before the close of the year there were but a> few singles and pairs left as fugitives in, that vast eountry where but a year hr two before they could have been counted almost by the hundreds of thousands. : Atithe end Of tllat seasonßoo,ooo buffalo: hides ‘were 5 shipped' -east l fidih Glendive; on (the: YellowstOne' river.