The Cosmopolitan 1887-10: Vol 4 Iss 2

The text was read from the page scans by machine (OCR), so it has mistakes and its columns may run together. See the pages · About this title · At the Internet Archive

Page 1

THE COSMOPOLITAN. OCTOBER, 1887. THE PASSING OF THE BUFFALO.—I. By WILLIAM T. HORNADAY. Author of ‘‘ Two Years in the Jungle.” T last the game butchers of the great West have stopped killing buffalo. The buffalo are all dead! The time has now arrived for the Territories to enact stringent laws against the killing of these animals, and I am pleased to see that the Montana Legislature has just rushed through a bill to that effect—only ten years behind its time! Next year, when the last buffalo ofthe eighty head still alive in the Panhandle of Texas is hunted down and killed, it will be time for the Lone Star State to frame a bill for his protection ; but its final passage can hardly be expected until about 1897. While the Territories are passing laws against the killing of buffalo, they ought also, by all means, to make the killing of mastodons between August 15th and Decem- ber 1st punishable by a fine or imprisonment. They should also pass laws against the ship- ping of mastodon carcasses out of their re- spective territorial limits ; for there is such a world of difference between the killing of twenty-six head of game for an Eastern market and the slaughter of that number in one season by one hunter (on Sunday Creek, for instance) to eat, to feed to his dogs, and to let lie in a heap until half of it spoiled. I am really ashamed to confess it, but we have been guilty of killing buffalo in the year of our Lord 1886. Under different cir- cumstances, nothing could have induced me to engage in such a mean, cruel, and utterly heartless enterprise as the hunting down of the last representatives of a vanishing race. But there was noalternative. The Philistines 9 were upon them, and between leaving them to be killed by the care-for-naught cowboys, who would leave them to decay, body and soul, where they fell, and killing them our- selves for the purpose of preserving their re- mains, there was really no choice. Perhaps you think a wild animal has no soul ; but let me tell youit has. Its skin is its soul, and when mounted by skillful hands, it becomes comparatively immortal. Now a days it is such an honor to kill.a buffalo that whenever a cowboy sees one he chases it, in order to be able to say that he has ‘‘ chased buffalo ;’’ and if he possibly can, he shoots it to death, in order that he may carry back to his camp five pounds of lean buffalo hump, and have his name go thundering down theages. It would bean in- teresting psychological study to determine the exact workings of the mind of a man who is capable of deliberately slaying a noble animal, in the full knowledge that he can make no earthly use of it, but must leave its magnificent skin, its beautiful head, and several hundred pounds of fine flesh to the miserable coyotes and the destroying ele- ments. If such an act is not deliberate murder, in heaven’s name, what is it? And yet, there are hundreds of intelligent men who can do such things, and others who can even kill half a dozen tuskless elephants in one forenoon, and call it ‘‘ sport.’’ Foreseeing that the great American bison is absolutely certain to be exterminated in a few years, the distinguished Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution determined last