bison, yet it was inevitable. Possibly it is not commonly known
that the general government had under consideration the sending
of its own troops to destroy the buffalo. Yet it is a fact, for
the army in the West fully realized the futility of subjugating
the Indians while they could draw subsistence from the bison. The
well-mounted aborigines hung on the flanks of the great buffalo
herds, migrating with them, spurning all treaty obligations, and
when opportunity offered murdering the advance guard of
civilization with the fiendish atrocity of carnivorous animals.
But while the government hesitated, the hide-hunters and the
railroads solved the problem, and the Indian's base of supplies
was destroyed.

Then began the great exodus of Texas cattle. The red men were
easily confined on reservations, and the vacated country in the
Northwest became cattle ranges. The government was in the market
for large quantities of beef with which to feed its army and
Indian wards. The maximum year's drive was reached in 1884, when
nearly eight hundred thousand cattle, in something over three
hundred herds, bound for the new Northwest, crossed Red River,
the northern boundary of Texas. Some slight idea of this exodus
can be gained when one considers that in the above year about
four thousand men and over thirty thousand horses were required
on the trail, while the value of the drive ran into millions. The
history of the world can show no pastoral movement in comparison.
The Northwest had furnished the market--the outlet for Texas.



CONTENTS