The Extermination of the American Bison Part 10

_Bones._--Next in importance to robes and hides was the bone product, the utilization of which was rendered possible by the rigorous climate of the buffalo plains. Under the influence of the wind and sun and the extremes of heat and cold, the flesh remaining upon a carca.s.s dried up, disintegrated, and fell to dust, leaving the bones of almost the entire skeleton as clean and bare as if they had been stripped of flesh by some powerful chemical process. Very naturally, no sooner did the live buffaloes begin to grow scarce than the miles of bleaching' bones suggested the idea of finding a use for them. A market was readily found for them in the East, and the prices paid per ton were sufficient to make the business of bone-gathering quite remunerative. The bulk of the bone product was converted into phosphate for fertilizing purposes, but much of it was turned into carbon for use in the refining of sugar.

The gathering of bones became a common industry as early as 1872, during which year 1,135,300 pounds were s.h.i.+pped over the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. In the year following the same road s.h.i.+pped 2,743,100 pounds, and in 1874 it handled 6,914,950 pounds more. This trade continued from that time on until the plains have been gleaned so far back from the railway lines that it is no longer profitable to seek them. For that matter, however, it is said that south of the Union Pacific nothing worth the seeking now remains.

The building of the Northern Pacific Railway made possible the s.h.i.+pment of immense quant.i.ties of dry bones. Even as late as 1886 overland travelers saw at many of the stations between Jamestown, Dakota, and Billings, Montana, immense heaps of bones lying alongside the track awaiting s.h.i.+pment. In 1885 a single firm s.h.i.+pped over 200 tons of bones from Miles City.

The valley of the Missouri River was gleaned by teamsters who gathered bones from as far back as 100 miles and hauled them to the river for s.h.i.+pment on the steamers. An operator who had eight wagons in the business informed me that in order to s.h.i.+p bones on the river steamers it was necessary to crush them, and that for crushed bones, s.h.i.+pped in bags, a Michigan fertilizer company paid $18 per ton. Uncrushed bones, s.h.i.+pped by the railway, sold for $12 per ton.

It is impossible to ascertain the total amount or value of the bone product, but it is certain that it amounted to many thousand tons, and in value must have amounted to some hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But for the great number of railroads, river steamers, and sea-going vessels (from Texas ports) engaged in carrying this product, it would have cut an important figure in the commerce of the country, but owing to the many interests between which it was divided it attracted little attention.

_Meat._--The amount of fresh buffalo meat cured and marketed was really very insignificant. So long as it was to be had at all it was so very abundant that it was worth only from 2 to 3 cents per pound in the market, and many reasons combined to render the trade in fresh buffalo meat anything but profitable. Probably not more than one one-thousandth of the buffalo meat that might have been saved and utilized was saved.

The buffalo carca.s.ses that were wasted on the great plains every year during the two great periods of slaughter (of the northern and southern herds) would probably have fed to satiety during the entire time more than a million persons.

As to the quality of buffalo meat, it may be stated in general terms that it differs in no way whatever from domestic beef of the same age produced by the same kind of gra.s.s. Perhaps there is no finer grazing ground in the world than Montana, and the beef it produces is certainly ent.i.tled to rank with the best. There are many persons who claim to recognize a difference between the taste of buffalo meat and domestic beef; but for my part I do not believe any difference really exists, unless it is that the flesh of the buffalo is a little sweeter and more juicy. As for myself, I feel certain I could not tell the difference between the flesh of a three-year old buffalo and that of a domestic beef of the same age, nor do I believe any one else could, even on a wager. Having once seen a butcher eat an elephant steak in the belief that it was beef from his own shop, and another butcher eat _loggerhead turtle_ steak for beef, I have become somewhat skeptical in regard to the intelligence of the human palate.

As a matter of experiment, during our hunt for buffalo we had buffalo meat of all ages, from one year up to eleven, cooked in as many different ways as our culinary department could turn out. We had it broiled, fried with batter, roasted, boiled, and stewed. The last method, when employed upon slices of meat that had been hacked from a frozen hind-quarter, produced results that were undeniably tough and not particularly good. But it was an unfair way to cook any kind of meat, and may be guarantied to spoil the finest beef in the world.

Hump meat from a cow buffalo not too old, cut in slices and fried in batter, _a la cowboy_, is delicious--a dish fit for the G.o.ds. We had tongues in plenty, but the ordinary meat was so good they were not half appreciated. Of course the tenderloin was above criticism, and even the round steaks, so lightly esteemed by the epicure, were tender and juicy to a most satisfactory degree.

It has been said that the meat of the buffalo has a coa.r.s.er texture or "grain" than domestic beef. Although I expected to find such to be the case, I found no perceptible difference whatever, nor do I believe that any exists. As to the distribution of fat I am unable to say, for the reason that our buffaloes were not fat.

It is highly probable that the distribution of fat through the meat, so characteristic of the shorthorn breeds, and which has been brought about only by careful breeding, is not found in either the beef of the buffalo or common range cattle. In this respect, shorthorn beef no doubt surpa.s.ses both the others mentioned, but in all other points, texture, flavor, and general tenderness, I am very sure it does not.

It is a great mistake for a traveler to kill a patriarchal old bull buffalo, and after attempting to masticate a small portion of him to rise up and declare that buffalo meat is coa.r.s.e, tough, and dry. A domestic bull of the same age would taste as tough. It is probably only those who have had the bad taste to eat bull-beef who have ever found occasion to asperse the reputation of _Bison america.n.u.s_ as a beef animal.

Until people got tired of them, buffalo tongues were in considerable demand, and hundreds, if not even thousands, of barrels of them were s.h.i.+pped east from the buffalo country.

_Pemmican._--Out of the enormous waste of good buffalo flesh one product stands forth as a redeeming feature--pemmican. Although made almost exclusively by the half-breeds and Indians of the Northwest it const.i.tuted a regular article of commerce of great value to overland travelers, and was much sought for as long as it was produced. Its peculiar "staying powers," due to the process of its manufacture, which yielded a most nouris.h.i.+ng food in a highly condensed form, made it of inestimable value to the overland traveler who must travel light or not at all. A handful of pemmican was sufficient food to const.i.tute a meal when provisions were at all scarce. The price of pemmican in Winnipeg was once as low as 2d. per pound, but in 1883 a very small quant.i.ty which was brought in sold at 10 cents per pound. This was probably the last buffalo pemmican made. H. M. Robinson states that in 1878 pemmican was worth 1s. 3d. per pound.

The manufacture of pemmican, as performed by the Red River half-breeds, was thus described by the Rev. Mr. Belcourt, a Catholic priest, who once accompanied one of the great buffalo-hunting expeditions:[45]

[Note 45: Schoolcraft's History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, iv, p. 107.]

"Other portions which are destined to be made into pimikehigan, or pemmican, are exposed to an ardent heat, and thus become brittle and easily reducible to small particles by the use of a flail, the buffalo-hide answering the purpose of a thres.h.i.+ng-floor. The fat or tallow, being cut up and melted in large kettles of sheet iron, is poured upon this pounded meat, and the whole ma.s.s is worked together with shovels until it is well amalgamated, when it is pressed, while still warm, into bags made of buffalo skin, which are strongly sewed up, and the mixture gradually cools and becomes almost as hard as a rock. If the fat used in this process is that taken from the parts containing the udder, the meat is called fine pemmican. In some cases, dried fruits, such as the prairie pear and cherry, are intermixed, which forms what is called seed pemmican. Tho lovers of good eating judge the first described to be very palatable; the second, better; the third, excellent. A taurean of pemmican weighs from 100 to 110 pounds. Some idea may be formed of the immense destruction of buffalo by these people when it is stated that a whole cow yields one-half a bag of pemmican and three fourths of a bundle of dried meat; so that the most economical calculate that from eight to ten cows are required for the load of a single vehicle."

It is quite evident from the testimony of disinterested travelers that ordinary pemmican was not very palatable to one unaccustomed to it as a regular article of food. To the natives, however, especially the Canadian _voyageur_, it formed one of the most valuable food products of the country, and it is said that the demand for it was generally greater than the supply.

_Dried, or "jerked" meat._--The most popular and universal method of curing buffalo meat was to cut it into thin flakes, an inch or less in thickness and of indefinite length, and without salting it in the least to hang it over poles, ropes, wicker-frames, or even clumps of standing sage brush, and let it dry in the sun. This process yielded the famous "jerked" meat so common throughout the West in the early days, from the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan. Father Belcourt thus described the curing process as it was practiced by the half-breeds and Indians of the Northwest:

"The meat, when taken to camp, is cut by the women into long strips about a quarter of an inch thick, which are hung upon the lattice-work prepared for that purpose to dry. This lattice-work is formed of small pieces of wood, placed horizontally, transversely, and equidistant from each other, not unlike an immense gridiron, and is supported by wooden uprights (trepieds). In a few days the meat is thoroughly desiccated, when it is bent into proper lengths and tied into bundles of 60 or 70 pounds weight. This is called dried meat (viande seche). To make the hide into parchment (so called) it is stretched on a frame, and then sc.r.a.ped on the inside with a piece of sharpened bone and on the outside with a small but sharp-curved iron, proper to remove the hair. This is considered, likewise, the appropriate labor of women. The men break the bones, which are boiled in water to extract the marrow to be used for frying and other culinary purposes. The oil is then poured into the bladder of the animal, which contains, when filled, about 12 pounds, being the yield of the marrow-bones of two buffaloes."

In the Northwest Territories dried meat, which formerly sold at 2_d._ per pound, was worth in 1878 10_d._ per pound.

Although I have myself prepared quite a quant.i.ty of jerked buffalo meat, I never learned to like it. Owing to the absence of salt in its curing, the dried meat when pounded and made into a stew has a "far away" taste which continually reminds one of hoofs and horns. For all that, and despite its resemblance in flavor to Liebig's Extract of Beef, it is quite good, and better to the taste than ordinary pemmican.

The Indians formerly cured great quant.i.ties of buffalo meat in this way--in summer, of course, for use in winter--but the advent of that popular inst.i.tution called "Government beef" long ago rendered it unnecessary for the n.o.ble red man to exert his squaw in that once honorable field of labor.

During the existence of the buffalo herds a few thrifty and enterprising white men made a business of killing buffaloes in summer and drying the meat in bulk, in the same manner which to-day produces our popular "dried beef." Mr. Allen states that "a single hunter at Hays City s.h.i.+pped annually for some years several hundred barrels thus prepared, which the consumers probably bought for ordinary beef."

_Uses of bison's hair._--Numerous attempts have been made to utilize the woolly hair of the bison in the manufacture of textile fabrics. As early as 1729 Col. William Byrd records the fact that garments were made of this material, as follows:

"The Hair growing upon his Head and Neck is long and s.h.a.gged, and so Soft that it will spin into Thread not unlike Mohair, and might be wove into a sort of Camlet. Some People have Stockings knit of it, that would have served an Israelite during his forty Years march thro' the Wilderness."[46]

[Note 46: Westover MSS., i, p. 172.]

In 1637 Thomas Morton published, in his "New English Canaan," p. 98,[47]

the following reference to the Indians who live on the southern sh.o.r.e of Lake Erocoise, supposed to be Lake Ontario:

[Note 47: Quoted by Professor Allen, "American Bisons," p. 107.]

"These Beasts [buffaloes, undoubtedly] are of the bignesse of a Cowe, their flesh being very good foode, their hides good lether, their fleeces very usefull, being a kind of wolle, as fine as the wolle of the Beaver, and the Salvages doe make garments thereof."

Professor Allen quotes a number of authorities who have recorded statements in regard to the manufacture of belts, garters, scarfs, sacks, etc., from buffalo wool by various tribes of Indians.[48] He also calls attention to the only determined efforts ever made by white men on a liberal scale for the utilization of buffalo "wool" and its manufacture into cloth, an account of which appears in Ross's "Red River Settlement," pp. 69-72. In 1821 some of the more enterprising of the Red River (British) colonists conceived the idea of making fortunes out of the manufacture of woolen goods from the fleece of the buffalo, and for that purpose organized the Buffalo Wool Company, the princ.i.p.al object of which was declared to be "to provide a subst.i.tute for wool, which subst.i.tute was to be the wool of the wild buffalo, which was to be collected in the plains and manufactured both for the use of the colonists and for export." A large number of skilled workmen of various kinds were procured from England, and also a plant of machinery and materials. When too late, it was found that the supply of buffalo wool obtainable was utterly insufficient, the raw wool costing the company 1_s._ 6_d._ per pound, and cloth which it cost the company 2 10_s._ per yard to produce was worth only 4_s._ 6_d._ per yard in England. The historian states that universal drunkenness on the part of all concerned aided very materially in bringing about the total failure of the enterprise in a very short time.

[Note 48: The American Bison, p. 197.]

While it is possible to manufacture the fine, woolly fur of the bison into cloth or knitted garments, provided a sufficient supply of the raw material could be obtained (which is and always has been impossible), nothing could be more visionary than an attempt to thus produce salable garments at a profit.

Articles of wearing apparel made of buffalo's hair are interesting as curiosities, for their rarity makes them so, but that is the only end they can ever serve so long as there is a sheep living.

In the National Museum, in the section of animal products, there is displayed a pair of stockings made in Canada from the finest buffalo wool, from the body of the animal. They are thick, heavy, and full of the coa.r.s.e, straight hairs, which it seems can never be entirely separated from the fine wool. In general texture they are as coa.r.s.e as the coa.r.s.est sheep's wool would produce.

With the above are also displayed a rope-like lariat, made by the Comanche Indians, and a smaller braided la.s.so, seemingly a sample more than a full-grown lariat, made by the Otoe Indians of Nebraska. Both of the above are made of the long, dark-brown hair of the head and shoulders, and in spite of the fact that they have been twisted as hard as possible, the ends of the hairs protrude so persistently that the surface of each rope is extremely hairy.

_Buffalo chips._--Last, but by no means least in value to the traveler on the treeless plains, are the droppings of the buffalo, universally known as "buffalo chips." When over one year old and thoroughly dry, this material makes excellent fuel. Usually it occurs only where fire-wood is un.o.btainable, and thousands of frontiersmen have a million times found it of priceless value. When dry, it catches easily, burns readily, and makes a hot fire with but very little smoke, although it is rapidly consumed. Although not as good for a fire as even the poorest timber it is infinitely better than sage-brush, which, in the absence of chips, is often the traveler's last resort.

It usually happens that chips are most-abundant in the sheltered creek-bottoms and near the water-holes, the very situations which travelers naturally select for their camps. In these spots the herds have gathered either for shelter in winter or for water in summer, and remained in a body for some hours. And now, when the cowboy on the round-up, the surveyor, or hunter, who must camp out, pitches his tent in the gra.s.sy coulee or narrow creek-bottom, his first care is to start out with his largest gunning bag to "rustle some buffalo chips" for a campfire. He, at least, when he returns well laden with the spoil of his humble chase, still has good reason to remember the departed herd with feelings of grat.i.tude. Thus even the last remains of this most useful animal are utilized by man in providing for his own imperative wants.

IX. THE PRESENT VALUE OF THE BISON TO CATTLE-GROWERS.

_The bison in captivity and domestication._--Almost from time immemorial it has been known that the American bison takes kindly to captivity, herds contentedly with domestic cattle, and crosses with them with the utmost readiness. It was formerly believed, and indeed the tradition prevails even now to quite an extent, that on account of the hump on the shoulders a domestic cow could not give birth to a half-breed calf. This belief is entirely without foundation, and is due to theories rather than facts.

Numerous experiments in buffalo breeding have been made, and the subject is far from being a new one. As early as 1701 the Huguenot settlers at Manikintown, on the James River, a few miles above Richmond, began to domesticate buffaloes. It is also a matter of historical record that in 1786, or thereabouts, buffaloes were domesticated and bred in captivity in Virginia, and Albert Gallatin states that in some of the northwestern counties the mixed breed was quite common. In 1815 a series of elaborate and valuable experiments in cross-breeding the buffalo and domestic cattle was begun by Mr. Robert Wickliffe, of Lexington, Ky., and continued by him for upwards of thirty years.[49]

[Note 49: For a full account of Mr. Wickliffe's experiments, written by himself, see Audubon and Bachman's "Quadrupeds of North America,"

vol. ii, pp. 52-54.]

Quite recently the buffalo-breeding operations of Mr. S. L. Bedson, of Stony Mountain, Manitoba, and Mr. C. J. Jones, of Garden City, Kans., have attracted much attention, particularly for the reason that the efforts of both these gentlemen have been directed toward the practical improvement of the present breeds of range cattle. For this reason the importance of the work in which they are engaged can hardly be overestimated, and the results already obtained by Mr. Bedson, whose experiments antedate those of Mr. Jones by several years, are of the greatest interest to western cattle-growers. Indeed, unless the stock of pure-blood buffaloes now remaining proves insufficient for the purpose, I fully believe that we will gradually see a great change wrought in the character of western cattle by the introduction of a strain of buffalo blood.

The experiments which have been made thus far prove conclusively that--

(1) The male bison crosses readily with the opposite s.e.x of domestic cattle, but a buffalo cow has never been known to produce a half-breed calf.

(2) The domestic cow produces a half-breed calf successfully.