Their numbers were
countless--incredible. In vast herds of hundreds of thousands of
individuals, they roamed from the Saskatchewan to the Rio Grande
and westward to the Rocky Mountains. They furnished all the means of
livelihood to the tribes of Horse Indians, and to the curious population
of French Metis, or Half-breeds, on the Red River, as well as to those
dauntless and archtypical wanderers, the white hunters and trappers.
Their numbers slowly diminished, but the decrease was very gradual until
after the Civil War. They were not destroyed by the settlers, but by the
railways and the skin hunters.
After the ending of the Civil War, the work of constructing
trans-continental railway lines was pushed forward with the utmost
vigor. These supplied cheap and indispensable, but hitherto wholly
lacking, means of transportation to the hunters; and at the same time
the demand for buffalo robes and hides became very great, while the
enormous numbers of the beasts, and the comparative ease with which they
were slaughtered, attracted throngs of adventurers.
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