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Show * 64 BASIS OP AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 that time numbered between three and four million, yet by 1876 was exterminated by the hide hunters. The opening of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1880 marked the beginning of a similar war of extermination of the northern herd, which contained one million five hundred thousand head; and by 1883 the end was accomplished and the sole survivors were some two hundred head in Yellowstone Park, five hundred and fifty near Great Slave < Lake, and a few scattered smaller bands. 1. The Yellowstone herd has been sadly decimated by poachers, and in March, 1893, numbered thirty- four head, while the Canadian wild herd near Great Slave Lake contained about six hundred. * Formerly completely intergraded with the southern form, the Canadian herd is now regarded as sufficiently distinct to warrant its designation as a variety- the wood bison. The buffalo in the various parks and private game preserves number about one thousand, and these are slowly increasing. Regarding the former value of the buffalo to man, it is impossible to estimate closely the commercial value of the beef and hides during the period of active slaughter, but it has been placed at from $ 15,000,000 to $ 20,000,000. However, the real value of the buffalo was not to the white man, but to the Indian tribes of the great plains. Besides the flesh- fresh, dried, and made into pemmican- there were the hide, which yielded tipi, clothing, bed- 1 Horoaday, The Extermination of the American Bison, 437. |