Bison

“ The elephant, even the biggest of its race, does not inspire awe, for we are too familiar with the docile Behemoth. Our children ride upon its back and feed it with buns. The lion is superb in appearance and demeanour, but it has not the bulk to make it terrible, behind bars. Now the bison is both unfamiliar and huge, and short-tempered besides, “with bloodshot eyes in savage rifts of hair.” A snort from it when angry will blow your hat off, a butt from its head, if meant in earnest, would flatten a tiger.
What a sight it must have been to see that “masterful tramping of the bison herds” ”

“ Head of young male Bison.
[Pg 40]
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. ”

“ And how could it be otherwise than that a man who could find it in his heart to murder a majestic bull bison for a hide worth only a dollar should form a one-dollar estimate of the grandest ruminant that ever trod the earth? Men who butcher African elephants for the sake of their ivory also entertain a similar estimate of their victims.
With an acquaintance which includes fine living examples of all the larger ruminants of the world except the musk-ox and the European bison, I am sure that the American bison is the grandest of them all. ”

“ So for several minutes I watched the great, clumsy, shaggy beasts, as they grazed in the open glade. Mixed with the eager excitement of the hunter was a certain half-melancholy feeling as I gazed on these bison, themselves part of the last remnant of a nearly vanished race. Few, indeed, are the men who now have, or evermore shall have, the chance of seeing the mightiest of American beasts in all his wild vigor. ”

“ The wind blew in her face as she rode, and owing to this circumstance, the bison being a quick scented animal, she was enabled to approach a solitary bull feeding by a stream at the foot of the hill and dispatched it by a shot from her rifle.
Dismounting, she whipped out her hunting knife and was proceeding to flay the carcass, when she was attracted by a low rumbling sound which shook the earth, and looking up the steep bluff at the foot of which she stood, saw a herd which must have contained ten thousand bison, plunging madly down upon her. ”

“ To be sure a herd of bison sometimes appeared near the children’s home, and then the men 149 hurried out with their guns to kill as many as possible before the animals were put to flight. Before the coming of the white men these bison roamed together in thousands and the Indians of the plains made their tents and clothing from their skins and feasted on the flesh of the bison. Every year since that time they have grown scarcer till only a few are left in the country, and these are on exhibition in the parks of the west. ”

“ A numerical estimate of the pure-blooded bison now in existence gives, in the United States, 968, mostly tame, and in Canada, 600, all of which are wild.
There is no place where the old adage, “Put not off until to-morrow,” can be better applied than in the protection of our wild animals. If the American bison is to be preserved, it must be to-day. ”

“ It was worth a long journey to stand thus and watch that small band of bison, representatives of a race whose myriads once covered all America, for though less than two hundred in number, they were feeding and warring precisely as their ancestors had fed and warred for a million years. Small wonder that the red men believe the white invader must have used some evil medicine, some magic power in sweeping these majestic creatures from the earth. ”

“ Bison.—This animal is found in herds in the prairies in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains: it is continually receding before the advance of man, and will soon be entirely banished to the far west. Schoolcraft says that the species is confined to the regions situated between the thirty-first and forty-ninth degrees of north latitude, and west of the Mississippi river. The only part of the country east of this river, where the bison now remains, is that included between the falls of St. Anthony and Sandy Lake, a range of about six hundred miles. ”

“ Sometimes the bison is destroyed in a much less sporting manner, the precipice and the pound being the two modes which are usually followed. The reader may probably be aware that, in those parts of North America inhabited by the bison, the surface of the plain is frequently interrupted by ravines with precipitous sides and of tremendous depth. When a hunting party see a herd of bisons within several miles of one of these ravines, they quietly separate, and steal round the herd, so as to place the bisons between themselves and the ravine. ”

“ We saw among them no article of food except the flesh of the bison; their horses, their arms, lodges, and dogs, are their only wealth.
In their marches they are all on horseback; the men are expert horsemen, and evince great dexterity in throwing the rope, taking in this way many of the wild horses which inhabit some parts of their country. They hunt the bison on horseback with the bow and arrow, being little acquainted with fire arms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When undisturbed on his chosen range, the bison used to be fond of lying down for an hour or two in the middle of the day, particularly when fine weather and good grass combined to encourage him in luxurious habits. ”

“ Hilly country, covered with extensive tracts of forest and bamboo jungle, is the likeliest ground for bison, though they occasionally visit the low ground at the foot of the hills, particularly when driven from the higher ridges by flies and the want of suitable pasture. Bison vary much in their habits according to locality; their migrations from high to low ground being mainly influenced by the rainfall (which regulates the growth of grass) and the prevalence of flies in their district. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a very curious fact that bison appear to be the [Pg 242] only animals which regularly resign, or are ousted from possession of, a herd when they attain their largest size and most powerful horns. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The largest and most untamable of the hollow-horns is that cousin of our patient, useful ox, the bison, or buffalo, [92] an animal rapidly becoming extinct through cruel and wanton slaughter. While few of us have seen the bison himself, his shaggy pelt is well known in the buffalo robes of our sleighs and carriages, and in the heavy overcoats made for northern travel. Next to the elephant and the rhinoceros, the bison is the largest of land-mammals.
If we lived in Arabia instead of America, we should set beside the sheep, as the special ally of men, the camel. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Like the bull, he has the custom of pawing the ground with his feet; his hide is hard, his flesh is tender, and good. By these characters, which are all we can rely on from Aristotle, we see how near the bonasus approaches towards the bison. Every part, in fact, agrees, the shape of the horns excepted, but which, as we have already observed, greatly varies in animals, who are, [35] notwithstanding, of the same species. We have seen such crooked horns, taken from an hunched ox of Africa, and we shall hereafter prove, that this hunched ox is no other than the bison. ”

“ In various portions of the Rocky Mountains, especially in the region of the parks, is found an animal which old mountaineers call the ‘bison.’ This animal bears about the same relation to a plains buffalo as a sturdy mountain pony does to an American horse. His body is lighter, whilst his legs are shorter, but much thicker and stronger, than the plains animal, thus enabling him to perform feats of climbing and tumbling almost incredible in such a huge and apparently unwieldy beast. ”

“ The most common method, however, of shooting the bison, is by crawling towards them from to leeward; and in favorable places, great numbers are taken in pounds. When the bison runs, it leans very much first to one side, for a short space of time, and then to the other, and so on alternately. ”

“ A charge of one of these animals is quite the reverse of a joke: Venator had better make sure of his nerve before he goes forth to stand before such a rush. The bison is a noble animal. We have seen heads [169] which a strong man was scarcely able to lift, and horns that measured twenty inches in circumference. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When you come to hunt, there will be only one bison left, for the white crow will tell the others to run away. This one bison will be I, but do not fear to kill and butcher me, for you cannot hurt me. Do not take any meat for [Pg 175] yourselves—only enough for the little children who are crying. Then you will see.’
“So Falling Star asked for a bison robe, and this he tied about him. Then he began rolling on the ground and bellowing. All at once he was a big bison bull, and he galloped away to where the other bison were feeding, and the white crow was hopping around among them. ”

“ The other, or American bison, improperly termed buffalo (Bison americanus) , is found only in the region lying north and south between the Great Slave Lake and the Yellowstone River, and is rapidly becoming extinct in the wild state, though formerly to be met with in immense herds. The two species closely resemble each other, the American bison, however, being for the most part smaller, and with shorter and weaker hind-quarters. The bison is remarkable for the great hump or projection over its fore-shoulders, at which point the adult male is almost six feet in height ”

“ 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. ”

“ He has a most sympathetic chapter on these noble animals, and has enjoyed from an elephant's back the best opportunities of observing them, as the bison does not fear the elephant, in whose company indeed it is often found to be, and after having thus observed a herd of bison grazing, he says that he has "often left the poor animals undisturbed." Laterly he never thought of attacking herd bison, as it is often difficult to get a shot at the bull of the herd, and confined his shooting to those old solitary bulls which have been turned out of the herds by younger and more vigorous animals. ”

“ There it still preserves the habits which made its ancient and gigantic relative so dangerous an animal. Unlike the buffalo, which loves the low-lying and marshy lands, the Bison prefers the high wooded localities, where it lives in small troops. ”

“ During the first cold of winter the plumage of the birds and the coats of the fur-bearing animals in the Zoo are hardly inferior to those of their wild kindred. Both the eagle and the American bison are in condition 4to excite the cupidity of an Indian brave. The bull bison, which in summer has a strangely ragged and “moth-eaten” appearance, with big patches of bare skin showing on its flanks, is now covered with a “buffalo-robe” of magnificent proportions and the richest colour and texture. From shoulders to tail, the body is wrapped in a mass of brown felted fur. ”

“ Like many other animals, wild and tame, they often liked to seek elevated points from which a wide view might be had, and I have found their tracks and other signs on points high up in the mountains, where only sheep or goats would be looked for. The mountain bison, so-called—and by many hunters regarded as a species quite distinct from the buffalo of the plains—was especially given to frequenting the peaks in summer; no doubt in part to avoid the attacks of flies, but also in part—as I believe—from sheer love of climbing. ”