they fall an easy prey to the Indian, who runs up lightly upon his snow-shoes and drives his lance to their hearts.  The skins are then stripped off, to be sold to the fur traders, and the carcasses left to be devoured by the wolves. [Owing to the fact that the winter’s supply of meat was procured and dried in the summer and fall months, the flesh of all buffalo killed in winter was allowed to become a total loss.] This is the season in which the greatest number of these animals are destroyed for their robes; they are most easily killed at this time, and their hair or fur, being longer and more abundant, gives greater value to the robe.”

[Note 61:  North American Indians, I, 253.]

* * * * *

III.  PROGRESS OF THE EXTERMINATION.

A. THE PERIOD OF DESULTORY DESTRUCTION, FROM 1730 TO 1830.

[Illustration:  INDIANS ON SNOW-SHOES HUNTING BUFFALOES.  From a painting in the National Museum by George Catlin.]

The disappearance of the buffalo from all the country east of the Mississippi was one of the inevitable results of the advance of civilization.  To the early pioneers who went forth into the wilderness to wrestle with nature for the necessities of life, this valuable animal might well have seemed a gift direct from the hand of Providence.  During the first few years of the early settler’s life in a new country, the few domestic animals he had brought with him were far too valuable to be killed for food, and for a long period he looked to the wild animals of the forest and the prairie for his daily supply of meat.  The time was when no one stopped to think of the important part our game animals played in the settlement of this country, and even now no one has attempted to calculate the lessened degree of rapidity with which the star of empire would have taken its westward way without the bison, deer, elk, and antelope.  The Western States and Territories pay little heed to the wanton slaughter of deer and elk now going on in their forests, but the time will soon come when the “grangers” will enter those regions and find the absence of game a very serious matter.

Although the bison was the first wild species to disappear before the advance of civilization, he served a good purpose at a highly critical period.  His huge bulk of toothsome flesh fed many a hungry family, and his ample robe did good service in the settler’s cabin and sleigh in winter weather.  By the time game animals had become scarce, domestic herds and flocks had taken their place, and hunting became a pastime instead of a necessity.