time vast number of bison that roamed and held the great American plains as their own, there remain but few.

For unrecorded ages the bison held all the fertile grazing land of this continent as their own. The greater part of these herds were in the South and West, but when Europeans began to settle in America, small bunches of the animals were occasionally found near the Atlantic coast, though they were generally rare everywhere east of the Appalachian Mountains. From Kentucky across the continent to Nevada, from the great Slave Lake on the north to Georgia on the south, the bison wandered in mighty droves, migrating as snow storms and drought dictated.

Wide, rolling plains, blackened as far as the sharp eyes of the settler could reach with huge, shaggy, humped backed beasts, bellowing, fighting and pawing the earth until it trembled as though an earthquake approached.

It is almost impossible for the average person of to-day to realize what the numbers of these herds amounted to, though an idea may be formed from the statement of Colonel Dodge in a report to the United States National Museum. In making a journey through Arkansas, he passed through a continuous herd of buffalo for twenty-five miles.

"The whole country," says Colonel Dodge, "appeared to be one mass of buffalo moving slowly to the north, and it was only when actually among them that it could be ascertained that

the apparently solid mass was an agglomeration of innumerable small herds of from fifty to two hundred animals, separated from the surrounding herds by greater or less space, but still separated. When I reached the point where the hills were no longer than a mile from the road, the buffalo on the hills, seeing an unusual object in their rear, turned, stared an instant, then started after me at full speed, stampeding and bringing with them the numberless herds through which they passed, and pouring down on me, all the herds, no longer separated, but one immense, compact mass of plunging animals, mad with fright and as irresistible as an avalanche. Reining in my horse, I waited until the front of the mass with within fifty yards, when a few well directed shots split the herd and sent it pouring off in two streams to the right and left. When they had passed they stopped, apparently satisfied, many within less than one hundred yards. From the top of Pawnee Rock I could see from six to ten miles in almost every direction. This whole space was covered with buffalo, looking at a distance like a compact mass.'

From careful information it has been estimated that such a herd would comprise at least four million animals. It is difficult now to realize that these animals were often a menace to wagon travel on the plains, besides stopping railway trains, and at times throwing them from the tracks.

Henry Kellsey, a factor of the Hudson Bay Company, in a report of his explorations in the far West of Canada, in 1691, tells of his party sighting buffalo in large numbers. A few years

The Monarch of the Yellowstone. later this explorer became the first buffalo hunter on the plains of Western Canada. He tells that everywhere the Indians were slaughtering, taking only the choice pieces and leaving the greater portion of each slain body to the wolves which followed in large bands.

The buffalo means everything to the Indians. He was their house, their food, their clothing, their implements of war-hide, flesh and bone, he belonged to them. Their horses were picketed with buffalo thongs and buffalo hair halters; their saddles were of buffalo skin pads, while the stirrups were of the same material. The Indian used his stomach as a cooking utensil. Making a hole in the ground, this organ was set in and filled with hot stones. No other animal of the plains served the Indian so well. He entered so vitally into their daily routine that a buffalo dance was devised to perpetuate his memory and show what the Indians have gone through in the chase. Instead of bragging with their tongues, as does the white man, they use pantomimes.

In the

dance they imitate the sneaking process of stalking game and dragging it home. To-day on every reserve in the West, buffalo skulls and bones adorn the tepees and lodges of the red men.

One of the most interesting legends of the Blackfeet tribe of Indians centers on the passing of the buffalo. When they had gone, there was nothing but starvation for the red men of the plains, and they retired to Two Medicine Valley under the shadow of Chief Mountain, where the Great Spirit directed them to send men of the tribe to the top of the mountain to intercede with the Wind God on behalf of their hunger. Spreading out his wings over the plains, he told them to return and they would find the buffalo. They did, and the plains were covered again with bison, and the famine was broken.

The buffalo is an animal of rather a low order of intelligence, and his dullness was one of the prime factors in his phenomenally swift extermination. Being exceedingly slow to realize the existence and nature of dangers which threatened his life, he would often stand quietly, and see scores and even hundreds of his fellows killed with seeming indifference.

Regularly as winter came on these animals moved to the southern part of their range, much the same as do certain species of birds. certain species of birds. Upon reaching their winter pasturage they scattered, and at the end of the season returned north in less conspicuous herds. They traveled much faster than one would suppose from their ungainly appearance, and rarely followed any but their own well beaten paths. When free from ice, rivers as wide as a mile were crossed without hesitation. In winter the combined weight of the herds often broke the ice, drowning numbers. Soft, muddy places and shallow pools were sought by these animals, where they rolled and wallowed until they had completely covered themselves with mud which, when baked in the sun, formed an effective armor against attacks of annoying insects.