Bison
or Buffalo, a wild animal of the ox kind, closely related to the wild ox or bison of Europe, but not to the Old World buffalo. It formerly ranged over the greater part of North America. Herds were known certainly in New York and Virginia. They were once abundant in the prairies and openings from the Tennessee River to the Great Lakes, but the natural home of the buffalo may be said to have been the grassy plain extending from Texas to Great Slave Lake. They penetrated the passes and parks of the Rocky Mountains, but are not known to have grazed west of the Sierra Nevada range. The extension of settlements early drove the buffalo westward across the Mississippi. After the Civil War, the building of the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railways cut their range into fragments. Trains were not infrequently impeded in early days by immense droves, but the murderous fire of passengers and the still more destructive methods of innumerable hunting parties, many of them from Europe, that slaughtered for the pleasure of killing, or for the sake of pelts, cleared the central part of the range as early as 1875. The southern buffaloes were all killed off as early, it is said, as 1890. The northern group is still represented by small herds in the Canadian forests beyond the Saskatchewan. January 1, 1908, William T. Hornaday, the eminent naturalist, estimated the number of wild bison in the Rocky Mountains at 25, and the number in Canada at 300. About 130 are captive in Europe, and 1,116 in America, bringing the total number of pure bred bison up to 2,047. The more notable American herds are found in Corbin's Game Preserve, New Hampshire; in Oklahoma; in the Yellowstone National Park; and on various private ranches. In 1908 Congress purchased twenty square miles of mountain and valley west of Missoula, Montana, and ordered it fenced for a perpetual bison reserve. Mr. Hornaday has charge of stocking the preserve.
Buffaloes differ from cattle more in outward appearance than in reality. They have fourteen pairs of ribs instead of thirteen. Spines rise from the shoulder vertebrae, giving a place of attachment for the immense muscles of the neck, and imparting the hunched appearance of the fore quarters. The head is broad. It is armed with short, outwardly curved horns, and covered with a shaggy mop of hair almost concealing a pair of little eyes. The hair is crisp and woolly, easily woven into cloth or twisted into ropes. A well grown female weighs 1,200 pounds; the male not infrequently attains a weight of 2,000 pounds.
Buffalo society was organized not unlike that of cattle. A unit consisted of a patriarchal old bull in the lead, followed by several cows and their young. Whether going to pasture or seeking water, each family traveled in single file. In the springtime, thousands of families marched in search of new pastures together, forming vast herds extending farther than the eye could reach. On the approach of winter these nomadic animals again turned southward, or retired into the sheltered valleys of the rivers and mountain ranges. When pursued on the plain, the buffalo ran with a lumbering gallop, holding its head so low that its front feet rose and fell past the side of the head. In its migrations the buffalo swam with ease and climbed with agility, but naturally followed the easiest lines of travel. Its sharp hoofs, passing and repassing in countless thousands for season after season, cut deep trails in the prairie turf and mountain passes of which portions may be seen to this day. Surveyors locating a road or railway across the then unknown mountain ranges found it expedient to follow the pathways of this native engineer. Coyotes and wolves followed these migrations to drag down calves, spent buffaloes, or some chance male wounded in a contest with his rivals, and buzzards kept a lookout for a share in the spoils. In fly time the buffalo was fond of a wallow in the mud, or of throwing sand and gravel over himself by pawing or tossing his horns. Settlers find buffalo bones in the swamps they now drain for meadows. Buffalo pits worn deep by ages of pawing and scraping may still be seen.
The buffalo has played no small part in the life of the western Indian, taking the place of the Virginia deer of the Atlantic coast and forest region. Buffalo meat,--fresh, smoked, dried, or converted into pemmican,--furnished a staple and often the sole article of food. The Indian made his moccasins of buffalo hide and slept between buffalo robes. The Mandan crossed the Missouri in a buffalo-hide canoe like the coracle of the ancient Briton. During the Indian summer, an Indian band gave itself up to a buffalo hunt. Mounted on his well trained pony, which he guided with his knees, the warrior dashed into a herd, racing along by the side of a selected animal until he had brought it down with bow and arrow, then along the side of another, until the plain was strewn with carcasses for the drudging squaws to recover.
Parkman's Oregon Trail, a book that every boy ought to read, gives an excellent account of the buffalo. Writing of the Dakota Indians in 1847 when buffaloes vet grazed in large herds in Iowa and Minnesota, he says, "The buffalo supplies them with the necessaries of life, with habitations, food, clothing, beds, and fuel; strings for their bows, glue, thread, cordage, trail-ropes for their horses, coverings for their saddles, vessels to hold water, boats to cross streams, and the means of purchasing what they most need from the traders. When the buffalo are extinct, they too must dwindle away."