American bison

“ The value of the American bison to civilized man can never be calculated, nor even fairly estimated. It may with safety be said, however, that it has been probably tenfold greater than most persons have [Pg 439] ever supposed. It would be a work of years to gather statistics of the immense bulk of robes and hides, undoubtedly amounting to millions in the aggregate; the thousands of tons of meat, and the train-loads of bones which have been actually utilized by man. Nor can the effect of the bison’s presence upon the general development of the great West ever be calculated. ”

“ Like all thick-haired animals of the temperate zone, the American bison 28 sheds its coat in spring, and does not regain full pelage until October or November.
The bison breeds in confinement about as readily as domestic cattle. In appearance, it is the most imposing of all bovine animals, and with two exceptions it is also the largest. In captivity its disposition is mild, though inclined to stubbornness. Occasionally, however, an old bull becomes so vicious that it is necessary to seclude him from the herd, and treat him as a dangerous animal. ”

“ Ten or twelve years ago there were very few American children who had ever seen a bison. Just a few years ago, we all began to realize that if a single bison was to be left, effective means must be started to put a stop to the indiscriminate slaughter. The few remaining bison, under care and protection have thrived remarkably well, and increased their numbers considerably. The American Bison Society has recently taken the census of the bison, and reports that all told, there are twenty one hundred and eight of them distributed among three government herds, besides various private ones. ”

“ Thanks to the efforts of the United States and Canadian Governments, the New York Zoological Society and the American Bison Society, the buffalo now is secure against extinction. Our government now owns and maintains six herds, having a total of about 570 head, and the Canadian Government owns about 1,600 head. Our chief hope is based on the herd in the Montana National Bison Range, now containing 134 head, living in a rich pasture of 29 square miles, capable of supporting 1,000 bison without the purchase of a pound of hay. ”

“ The American bison, or buffalo, is a close relative of the larger bison which once inhabited Europe and survives in limited numbers in certain game preserves of Poland and the Caucasus. The size, dark shaggy coat, great head, and high arched shoulders of our bison give them a unique individuality among American big game. They once roamed in vast numbers over a broad territory, extending from Great Slave Lake, Canada, south to southern New Mexico, and from Pennsylvania and eastern Georgia to Arizona and northern Nevada. ”

“ Head of young male Bison.
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THE AUROCHS, OR EUROPEAN BISON. Bos Bison.
In this, as in the American species, the head is very broad, and the forehead arched; but the horns are longer, more curved, and end in a finer point than those of the American Bison. The eyes are large and dark; the hair on the forehead is long and wavy; under the chin and on the breast it forms a sort of beard. In winter, the whole of the neck, hump, and shoulders are covered with a long woolly hair of a dusky brown colour, intermingled with a short soft fur of a fawn colour. ”

“ It is hoped that the following historical account of the discovery, partial utilization, and almost complete extermination of the great American bison may serve to cause the public to fully realize the folly of allowing all our most valuable and interesting American mammals to be wantonly destroyed in the same manner. ”

“ The American bison has always avoided the woods and roamed the prairies in countless herds. But all reliable historic records describe the Wisent as a forest animal, and its few remaining survivors are [Pg 506] entirely limited to the forests. Apparently it was never so widely and generally distributed as the Auerochs and reached western Europe later, for it is not found in the north, and never in conjunction with the mammoth and rhinoceros. Remains of the bison have also been found in Asia Minor. In Lithuania the bison lives together in herds, resenting the approach of all strangers. ”

“ If a warm day came, and thawed the upper surface of the snow sufficiently for succeeding cold to freeze it into a crust, the outlook for the bison began to be serious. A man can travel over a crust through which the hoofs of a ponderous bison cut like chisels and leave him floundering belly-deep. It was at such times that the Indians hunted him on snow-shoes, and drove their spears into his vitals as he wallowed helplessly in the drifts. Then the wolves grew fat upon the victims which they, also, slaughtered almost without effort. ”

“ The height of a fine bull American bison at the shoulder is 6 feet. The horns are short, blunt, and curved, and set farther back on the forehead than in the European species. The hindquarters are low and weak, and the mane develops in winter into a thick robe, covering the neck, shoulders, and chest. An adult bull bison was found to weigh 1,727 lbs. The woodland-bison of Athabasca, now nearly exterminated, are larger than the prairie-bison, and have finer coats. In 1897 there were said to be between 280 and 300 head remaining in two herds. ”

“ Tampa, Manatee County.—In the Jarman collection, now in Vanderbilt University, and made in the region about Tampa, is a right lower third molar of Bison. It is well fossilized, but structurally does not appear to differ from a tooth of the existing American bison. It belonged, however, quite certainly to an extinct species. In the American Museum of Natural History, New York, is a well-worn lower left last molar of a bison, dredged up in Alafia River. With it were a mastodon tooth, teeth of two or three extinct horses, and various extinct tortoises. ”

“ The sudden extinction of the bison resulted partly from the slaughter and partly from the breaking up of the herds and the interference with their free migration by the trans-continental railway. An interesting discovery made only this year, in regard to the closely allied European bison, suggests that disease may also have played a part in the destruction of the North American bison. A few hundred individuals of the European bison are all that remain at this day. ”

“ There is reason to fear that unless the United States Government takes the matter in hand and makes a special effort to prevent it, the pure-blood bison will be lost irretrievably through mixture with domestic breeds and through in-and-in breeding. ”

“ Although the existence of a few widely-scattered individuals enables us to say that the bison is not yet absolutely extinct in a wild state, there is no reason to hope that a single wild and unprotected individual will remain alive ten years hence. The nearer the species approaches to complete extermination, the more eagerly are the wretched fugitives pursued to the death whenever found. Western hunters are striving for the honor (?) of killing the last buffalo, which, it is to be noted, has already been slain about a score of times by that number of hunters. ”

“ Had the bison remained for a few more centuries in undisturbed possession of his range, and with liberty to roam at will over the North American continent, it is almost certain that several distinctly recognizable varieties would have been produced. The buffalo of the hot regions in the extreme south would have become a short-haired animal like the gaur of India and the African buffalo. The individuals inhabiting the extreme north, in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake, for example, would have developed still longer hair, and taken on more of the dense hairyness of the musk ox. ”

“ There is also, as something unusual, a thing to which every one here aspires, a herd of American bison. They are perfectly wild, and are kept on a peninsula, where they are seen through the gaps in the enclosure. ”

“ The great elevation of the forequarters, the mass of long hair clothing the head, shoulders, and fore part of the body, together with the peculiar form of the head and horns, the latter of which are cylindrical, serve at once to distinguish the bison from the other members of the ox tribe. Some of the points distinguishing the American bison from its European cousin are that the mass of hair on the fore quarters is longer, the form of the skull is different, the horns are shorter, thicker, blunter, and more sharply curved. ”

“ One of the incidents in this parallelism is the way in which the inhabitants accepted animals already trained and brought from elsewhere rather than attempt to train the similar beasts of their own forests. Doubtless the reason why the European bison is not a domestic animal is exactly the same as the reason why the American bison and African buffalo are not domestic animals. The northern European hunting savages were displaced or subjugated by, or received a higher culture from, tribes bringing from Asia or from the Mediterranean lands the cattle they had already tamed. ”

“ The late Sir Samuel Baker, in answer to my question as to what wild form was the most to be feared in combat, unhesitatingly answered, "The African buffalo, the bulls of which charge home upon any aggressor with an immediate and determined fury, which often enables them to kill the hunter after they have been shot through the brain." Our American bison, though a much milder-spirited beast, seems also to be essentially undomesticable for the reason that he cannot be taught to subordinate his desires to the will of man. He can readily be brought to the point where he will tolerate captivity ”

“ What room is there in “the States,” where men are already beginning to complain of overcrowding, for multitudes of grass-consuming bison? For the farmer's or the dairyman's purpose they were of no more use than the hippopotamus in Africa. They had a very small economic value, and so long as one fine herd is maintained, it is only the sentimentalist who can find reasons to deplore their extinction. ”

“ The railroad company has been glad to furnish them pasturage for the sake of adding to the attractions of the park, in which there are also forty-three head of deer, including two as fine bucks as ever trotted over the national deer trail toward the salt-licks in northern Utah.
“While the bison at Bismark Grove are splendid specimens of their class, “Cleveland” is decidedly the pride of the herd, and as grand a [Pg 462] creature as ever trod the soil of Kansas on four legs. He is just six years old and is a perfect specimen of the kings of the plains. ”

“ J. W. White, of Newbern, a lower right last molar of a species of bison reported found in a creek, and an incisor tooth of a horse, which appear to be fossilized. The bison tooth had just begun to wear. The fore-and-aft length of the crown is 37 mm. The locality is somewhat outside of the range of Bison bison as given by Allen on his map (“American Bisons, Living and Extinct”) . The fossil may well belong to some extinct species and have lived in that region in middle Pleistocene times.
MISSISSIPPI.
(Map 26.) ”

“ Whoever sees a bison at this period is filled with a desire to assist nature by plucking off the flying streamers of old hair; but the bison never permits anything of the kind, however good one’s intentions may be. All efforts to dislodge the old hair are resisted to the last extremity, and the buffalo generally acts as if the intention were to deprive him of his skin itself. ”

“ While there is not at hand any positive evidence that the buffalo ever inhabited the southwestern portion of Pennsylvania, its presence in the locality mentioned above, and in West Virginia generally, on the south, furnishes sufficient reason for extending the boundary so as to include the southwestern portion of the State and connect with our starting point, the District of Columbia.
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III. Abundance.
Of all the quadrupeds that have lived upon the earth, probably no other species has ever marshaled such innumerable hosts as those of the American bison. ”

“ The pelvis of the plains buffalo is surprisingly small and weak for so large an animal. Beyond question, constant mountain climbing is bound to develop a maximum of useful muscle and bone and a minimum of useless fat. If the loss of mane sustained by the African lions who live in bushy localities may be taken as an index, we should expect the bison of the mountains, especially the “wood buffalo,” to lose a great deal of his shaggy frontlet and mane on the bushes and trees which surrounded him. ”

“ The gaur has no long hair upon any part of his body or head. What little hair he has is very short and thin, his hindquarters being almost naked. I have seen hundreds of these animals at short range, and have killed and skinned several very fine specimens, one of which stood 5 feet 10 inches in height at the shoulders. But, despite his larger bulk, his appearance is not nearly so striking and impressive as that of the male American bison. He seems like a huge ox running wild. ”

“ At the close of the breeding season the herd quickly settles down to its normal condition. The mass gradually resolves itself into the numerous bands or herdlets of from twenty to a hundred individuals, so characteristic of bison on their feeding grounds, and these gradually scatter in search of the best grass until the herd covers many square miles of country. ”

“ One-fourth breeds for Texas, one-half breeds for Colorado and Kansas, and three-fourths breeds for more northern country, is what will soon be sought after more than any living animal. Then we will never be confronted with dead carcarsses from starvation, exhaustion, and lack of nerve, as in years gone by.”
The bison as a beast of burden.—On account of the abundance of horses for all purposes throughout the entire country, oxen are so seldom used they almost constitute a curiosity. ”