As Chief Taxidermist of the National Museum, Hornaday’s job was to plan and produce animal exhibits. One day early in 1886 he realized that in the museum belonging to the entire nation there was not a single American bison display that met his own high standards.
He could not say when he had first become concerned with bison Americanus, or buffalo as it is more familiarly called. Perhaps it was during his first winter at Ward’s, when a load of fresh buffalo skins arrived from Wyoming, and he and the other workers spent a week working on the thick, shaggy hides. Perhaps it was in the cities and jungles of India, where the beast of burden, with its tough hide and patchy hair, seemed to him ugly in comparison with its majestic cousin in his native land.
He took inventory at the museum: one mounted female skin, another unmounted, and two old, delapidated, and poorly mounted skins. In addition there were: one complete male skeleton, an incomplete skeleton, a few broken skulls, and two mounted heads. There was not even one presentable male of good size, typical of the species.
He had to get new display specimens. But time was running out. These animals which had been plentiful only twenty years earlier were being slaughtered at a fantastic rate. If he waited too much longer, there might be no more bison for him to preserve.
He planned his course of action. First he needed specific details. How many buffalo were left? How many had there once been, for that matter? And where might the surviving animals be found? He wrote to everyone he could think of—hunters, soldiers, travelers, postmasters, ranchers—in the land that had been buffalo country only a short while ago.
When the answers to his letters began to come back, he was stunned. He had known that the animal millions were going, but now he realized with a start that they were almost gone!
He pieced the story together from the scattered reports that came in to him.
Between 1800 and 1870 the country west of the Mississippi River was one vast buffalo range. The animals lived and moved in huge multitudes, like grand armies passing in review. They interfered with travelers and settlers. They frequently stopped boats on the rivers. They derailed locomotives and railroad cars.
In 1871 a Colonel Dodge, traveling in a light wagon between two forts only 34 miles apart on the Arkansas River, drove 25 miles through an immense buffalo herd. He wrote afterward, “The whole country appeared one great mass of buffalo.” Other travelers in the area reported that the same herd took five days to pass a given point. Colonel Dodge calculated that the herd extended for as much as 25 by 50 miles, and that he had seen half a million beasts in a single day!
And that was only a fraction of the buffalo population in the United States and Canada. From reports like these Hornaday was able to estimate that in 1868 there had been six million. And there may have been more. Now, less than twenty years later, there were perhaps six hundred.
Between 1865 and 1869 the Union Pacific Railroad was built, spanning the continent and cutting the buffalo herd into two parts. The railroad, and the branch lines that began to sprout from it, brought men and breech-loading long-range repeating rifles right into buffalo country. As towns became settled in the newly opened-up portions of the country, they became headquarters for hunters. There was a market, back east, for buffalo robes.
The southern portion of the herd was the first to go. It was systematically plundered from 1871 on. By 1875 only scattered bands of buffalo remained. During the first three years of slaughter, between three and five animals were killed and wasted for every hide that reached the market.
There was a market for buffalo meat, too. The tongue, preserved in salt, was a particular delicacy. Hornaday believed that at least 50,000 animals had been slaughtered for their tongues alone. A man might bring in two barrels of tongues, and not another part of the buffalo—not a pound of meat, not even the robe. It was easier to cut out a tongue than to skin an animal and then cure the hide.
When there were no buffalo left south of the transcontinental railroad, the hunters went north, into the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming. In Montana one hunter killed one hundred and seven animals in one hour, without changing his position. That hunter accounted for about five thousand in a season. And there were five thousand hunters and skinners trying to do the same.
The great destruction had begun while Hornaday was in college. That was just a dozen years before. More than three and a half million head of buffalo on the southern range had been killed, close to two million in the north. There were absolutely no state, territorial, or national governmental limitations on the slaughter. No one had thought, seeing the vast herds, that the supply of buffalo would ever be diminished. And no one really cared. No one, until Hornaday.
He prepared a memorandum showing the extent of the destruction that had already taken place. He pointed out that this was truly the National Museum’s last chance to get specimens, if indeed it wasn’t too late already. His memorandum was addressed to Professor Spencer Fullerton Baird, head of the Smithsonian Institution, and to Dr. Goode.
Professor Baird sent for him immediately. He had had no idea that the bison were that near to total destruction.
“I am greatly shocked and disturbed by your letter,” he said. “I dislike being the means of killing any of these last bison, but since it is now utterly impossible to prevent their destruction, we simply must go after specimens. You must go west as soon as possible, and find out if specimens can still be obtained. If it is not too late, collect twenty or thirty skins, the same number of skeletons, and pick up about fifty skulls.” Hornaday had reported that bones and skulls were simply lying about, bleaching in the sun, where the buffalo carcasses had rotted.
Professor Baird continued. “We must get enough specimens not only for ourselves, but for the other museums that will need them too. The Smithsonian will meet the expenses. I will ask the Secretaries of War and the Interior to help us.”
Baird, Goode, and Hornaday all felt terrible about killing twenty or thirty animals. But they were convinced that, even if they did not, the species would still not survive.
Of the less than three hundred buffalo then believed to be still alive in the United States more than half were in Montana. The rest were scattered in Dakota, Texas, and Colorado. Hornaday decided to try Montana first.
The Smithsonian’s call for help was quickly answered. The Secretary of War directed that forts in the area to which Hornaday was going furnish him with field transportation, military escort, and camp equipment. He also directed the forts to sell Hornaday supplies from their commissaries. The Secretary of the Interior, meanwhile, directed all of its scouts, Indian agents, and other employees to cooperate with Hornaday if called upon.
On May 6 Hornaday left Washington, heading for Miles City, Montana. With him was his assistant taxidermist, A. H. Forney, and his friend George H. Hedley of Medina, New York.
Just before he left, an acquaintance of his, a retired army captain, had visited him in his laboratory.
“Well,” began the captain. “I hear you’re going to Montana to hunt buffalo. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars that you don’t find even one wild one.”
Hornaday was not a gambling man. But he hoped the captain’s information was wrong.
On May 9 they arrived at Fort Keogh, near Miles City. They stayed here a few days, making inquiries, organizing the equipment for the hunt.
No one knew of any wild buffalo anywhere. “There are no more buffalo.” “You can’t get buffalo any more.” These words were repeated by everyone to whom he spoke.
He was discouraged.
Then he met Henry R. Phillips, owner of the LU-bar Ranch, and he knew he had come to the right place. “Certainly there are a few buffalo in the badlands west of my place,” Phillips told him. “One of our cowboys killed a cow a few weeks ago; and about thirty-five head have been seen. If you go up there and hunt them—and stick to it—you’re almost sure to get some.”
On May 13 they set out. In addition to Hornaday and his two assistants, the party included a five-man military escort, a cook, and a teamster. The army had also provided a six-mule team, and gear for the two saddle horses he had bought in Miles City.
They traveled slowly through dry, treeless country. On the third day they came to the first bleaching bones of a buffalo. Once this region had been a famous buffalo range. Now the dry, white skeletons lay thickly on the trail, ghastly monuments to slaughter. They lay precisely as they had fallen years before, the heads stretched forward as if gasping their last. They saw more than thirty skeletons in little more than an acre: here a hunter undoubtedly had gotten a “stand” on a “bunch” and picked them off from behind the rocks. Hornaday selected three of the finest, largest complete skeletons.
A few days later they reached the LU-bar Ranch, about eighty miles northwest of Miles City. They found a Cheyenne Indian to serve as a scout and guide; and occasionally they were able to enlist the services of a cowboy who was familiar with the region. Each day they would ride over the country, covering a new section of it.
One day they found a buffalo calf that had been unable to keep up with its mother and had been separated from the herd. When the calf saw them riding toward it, it started to run. But it was weak, and they caught up with it in a few minutes. They jumped off their horses and tried to catch it in their arms, but the calf butted first one and then another. It even butted the mule. Finally a cowboy had to lasso it. Now they had a marvelous living specimen to take back with them.
Ten days later two bull buffaloes were sighted, and one of them was killed. Its skin was in bad condition: it was shedding its heavy winter growth of hair and the new hair was patchy and uneven. They took the skeleton, but the skin of the head and neck only.
Hornaday knew that there was indeed a herd here, but decided it would be better to wait until autumn so that animals with a good growth of hair could be taken. He planned to return to Washington.
On September 24 Hornaday was again in Miles City; his only assistant was W. Harvey Brown, a senior student at the University of Kansas. Three cowboys were waiting to guide and hunt with him. They purchased two months’ supply of foodstuffs, and rented horses and a light ranch wagon. The cowboys provided their own mounts. In all there were ten horses in their outfit: a team to draw the wagon, and two for each hunter. The worst problem of provisions was hauling enough grain for ten hard-working horses. They took 2000 pounds of oats.
Shortly after sunrise on October 14, they picked up a bison trail and followed it south. It led out of the butte country where they had been until now, and into a new and difficult terrain. The dry soil was loose and crumbling, and the horses’ hooves sank deep into it at every step. They struggled through a thick growth of sagebrush. Finally the bdlands ended and they followed the trail into grassy country, but here they could not make out the tracks. At noon they paused on a high point, and with binoculars discovered fourteen buffalo about two miles away.
They crept up to within 200 yards and fired, but missed. After a chase, Hornaday and one of the cowboys killed two each.
Two days later, on the same spot, the cowboys got four more. The largest of them fell late in the afternoon at some distance from their camp. There was not enough daylight left to do a complete skinning job, so the cowboys partly skinned the legs, dressed the carcass to preserve the meat, and left it there, planning, to come back the next day to finish the job.
In the morning they discovered that Piegan Indians had beaten them to it. The skin and the edible meat were all gone; even the leg-bones had been cracked for the marrow. They had not skinned the head, but it was useless for zoological purposes now. One side of it was covered with red warpaint, the other with yellow.
By the twentieth of November, exactly two months since Hornaday had left Washington, the party had bagged twenty animals, the minimum number hoped for.
That night it started to snow, a real Montana blizzard that lasted a full week. Fortunately their camp was well sheltered, between the rocky walls of a canyon, protected by an overhanging bluff. They passed the time telling buffalo stories and hunting yarns, throwing wood into their camp stove, and feeding oats to their horses. By December 6 the snow had melted enough for them to go out. Hornaday and one of the cowboys rode off on a last trip for buffalo.
They found three, an enormous old bull, an adult cow, and a two-year-old heifer. Hornaday shot the bull through the shoulder, breaking the foreleg, and it dropped to the ground. Then, one more shot and the bull was dead.
It was a particularly magnificent specimen, larger than any other they had taken, or heard of, for that matter. Its hair was in excellent condition, long, thick, evenly and richly colored. Hornaday estimated the old bull’s weight at 1600 pounds.
The last buffalo hunt was successful, and he could leave Montana having completed his mission.
About a week later they left, and five days after that reached Miles City, just ahead of a snowstorm which had been threatening for days. Hornaday and Brown spent the next snowbound days packing up and organizing their collection. It filled twenty-one large cases, which eventually reached the museum in good condition.
The new year had just begun when the party returned to Washington. A year had passed since Hornaday first thought of going after bison Americanus. Now they would begin preparing and mounting the specimens, planning the setting in which he would place them. Hornaday wanted a group that would show buffalo of all ages. It would be a monument to a vanished native species.
The job of stuffing and mounting the specimens took over a year. The group included six buffaloes: a cow, a young bull, a young cow, and a yearling as well as a baby calf and an old bull. Hornaday planned to use some bleached buffalo skulls and a few fossil bones, too. A large mahogany and glass case, 16 feet long by 12 feet wide and 10 feet high, had been built to his specifications.
Everything was brought into the south end of the south hall of the museum. Shielded by screens from the curious gaze of the public, Hornaday and his two assistants worked to install the group in the case. Only one outsider, a reporter from the Washington Star, was allowed to watch them as they put the finishing touches on what Hornaday hoped would be his taxidermic masterpiece.
On March 10, 1888, two days before the bison group was to be unveiled, a newspaper headline caught his eye.
“A SCENE FROM MONTANA—SIX OF MR. HORNADAY’S BUFFALOES FORM A PICTURESQUE GROUP—A BIT OF THE WILD WEST REPRODUCED AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM—SOMETHING NOVEL IN THE WAY OF TAXIDERMY—REAL BUFFALO—GRASS, REAL MONTANA DIRT, AND REAL BUFFALOES”.
He began to read.
“A little bit of Montana—a small square patch from the wildest part of the wild West—has been transferred to the National Museum. It is so little that Montana will never miss it, but enough to enable one who has the faintest glimmer of imagination to see it all for himself—the hummocky prairie, the buffalo-grass, the sagebrush, and the buffalo. It is as though a little group of buffalo that have come to drink at a pool had been suddenly struck motionless by some magic spell, each in a natural attitude, and then the section of prairie, pool, buffalo, and all had been carefully cut out and brought to the National Museum.
“The group, with its accessories, has been prepared so as to tell in an attractive way to the general visitor to the Museum the story of the buffalo, but care has been taken at the same time to secure an accuracy of detail that will satisfy the critical scrutiny of the most technical naturalist. It represents a new departure in mounting specimens for museums. The American mammals collected by Mr. Hornaday will be mounted in a manner that will make each piece or group an object lesson telling something of the history and habits of the animal.”
He was delighted. That reporter who had been snooping about while he worked had understood what he was trying to do. The public would, too.
With the bison group finished and cordially received, he had a double accomplishment of which to be proud. He had convincingly demonstrated that the new taxidermy belonged in museums, as a dramatic tool for educating the public. And he had preserved in the nation’s capital city its grandest and most distinctive animal.
Good. Now he could get on with his next project. It was already taking shape in his mind.