Harvesting the Bison Herds

J. WRIGHT MOOAR, Buffalo Days (1933)

Railroads helped integrate the West into the national and global economy. The Great Plains, in particular, developed as a key region for America’s economic growth, a development that would have surprised an earlier generation accustomed to thinking of the vast interior as a worthless desert. Commercialized buffalo hunting drove the economic transformation while also working to eliminate American Indians as obstacles to westward expansion. J. Wright Mooar, whose stories of his buffalo-hunting days were first published in 1933, claimed to have killed twenty thousand buffalo, selling meat to feed the proliferating numbers of railroad workers and the hides to East Coast tanneries. The destruction of the herds opened the plains to cattle ranching and sealed the fate of Plains Indians whose lives were organized around the buffalo.

Curing Buffalo Meat

It was in October, 1877, while I was killing buffalo on Deep Creek, that John returned from a trip to Fort Griffin after the mail, and reported that a large herd of cattle was coming into the country, and that the John Hum outfit was then only twenty miles east of our hunting grounds.

It was immediately determined to move camp seventy miles north, to Double Lake in Lynn County. Here headquarters were maintained and the meat was hauled to the old Deep Creek camp, where the smokehouse for curing the meat was located.

As soon as the hide was stripped from the fallen bison, the meat was cut from the hams in four large pieces, the bone being cut out. When from one thousand to twelve hundred pounds of meat was thus collected, it was piled in a vat constructed by driving four stakes into the ground in a square four by four feet, the stakes standing four feet high. To these four corner stakes, a hide, hair side out, was tied by its corners, and let sag in the middle to form a sack or sort of vat. Into this the meat was thrown, and salted as it was thrown in. A brine was then poured over this until the meat was covered. A hide was stretched over the whole for a lid, thus keeping out sun and dirt. Four days later, sugar and saltpeter were added in precise measure to the brine. This was left for two weeks. The thoroughly medicated meat was then taken out and placed in the smokehouse for final seasoning.

The smokehouse was constructed by stretching buffalo hides over a framework of hackberry poles, put together with eightpenny nails, one hundred pounds of which had been hauled from Fort Worth. The house thus constructed was one hundred and ten feet long and twenty feet wide. Along the center of the floor space were ten square pits for the fire. For wood, hackberry and chinaberry logs were used, and the smoking process required ten or twelve days. This prepared meat was hauled to Fort Griffin and sold.

During this winter of '77, we took three thousand seven hundred hides, which were hauled to Fort Worth, and twenty-five thousand pounds of meat, which were sold locally.

Cattle were now being driven into the country very rapidly, and the Mooar Brothers bought the John Goff cattle in Fisher County and changed the brand from XTS to SXT. This brand was kept up in Fisher County for ten years, and then moved to the old buffalo camp on Deep Creek, where my ranch is today.

Passing of the Buffalo

By the arrival of 1879, the hunters were leaving for the mining states, or seeking other lines of business, as they realized the great hunting days were over. Mooar Brothers, however, continued pursuit of the dwindling herds to the great plains country, and during the year of 1878 secured two thousand eight hundred hides and twenty thousand pounds of meat. The last of the buffalo, save a few scattered bands of young animals too young for the hunters to bother with, fell to my big guns in March, 1879. Loading seven thousand pounds of cured meat on two wagons drawn by six good mules, and accompanied by a seventeen-year-old boy, [we] headed west on a fifty-two day trip to Prescott and Phoenix, Arizona, where the meat was sold to the miners. I did not return to Texas until October, 1880.

In the meantime, John had moved the Deep Creek camp to the Fisher County cattle camp. The last of the buffalo hides were sold to Charley Rath, who had bought all interest in the Reynolds store in Stonewall County. As the buffalo days ended, he moved the goods remaining in this store to Camp Supply, in Indian Territory. John did the hauling for Rath on this move, making the long journey with his ox teams. From Camp Supply, he made one trip for Rath to Dodge City, and returned to Texas in December, 1879, loaded with corn from the Red River Country. This he sold to the Texas Ranger camp at Big Spring, Texas. R.C. Ware was in charge of the Ranger camp. He became a noted citizen of the changing Southwest.

Thus ended eight full years of continuous and eventful hunting of the great American bison.

The Indians realized very keenly that the work of the buffalo hunters was the real menace to the wild, free life they wished to lead, and never lost an opportunity to wreak vengeance. This made the life of the hunter one of constant peril. He was always under observation, wild eyes from some covert watching his every move. It is past comprehension to people of today how, under such circumstances, a lone hunter could wander at will and escape ambush or sudden assault in overwhelming numbers. Two things alone protected him: his rifle and his marksmanship. Perhaps one might also add that, while seemingly wandering at will, be was as alert as an Indian and seldom caught off his guard.

The Half-Inch Rifle

His rifle was one made at the request of his guild at the very outset, and was manufactured by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company to meet the requirements for the biggest game on the North American continent — the buffalo. The weapon was a gun weighing from twelve to sixteen pounds, and the caliber was .50-110. One hundred and ten grains of powder, in a long brass shell, hurled from the beautifully rifled muzzle of the great gun a heavy leaden missle that in its impact and its tearing, shattering qualities would instantly bring down the biggest bison, if properly aimed, and that reached out to incredible distances for rifles of that period.

In the account of our trek to Deep Creek, a strip of country like the plains country is mentioned. This plain was evidently once a part of the great Central Plain, but this was at some distant period cut off to itself by upheavals in the general level. In extent it is thirty or forty miles long and from five to fifteen miles wide. Deep Creek marks its western boundary.

Riding eastward across this level, open stretch, and with a wagon and mule team following, I came one afternoon to the broken country east of the table-land. A sunken country rolled away to the east, and the terrain was marked by deep draws, mesquite flats, and small knolls and mesas called the Sugar Loaf Hills. The country looked to be a good place for hunting, with plenty of wood and water at hand, but somewhat dangerous because furnishing plenty of covert for Indian ambuscades. No Indians had been seen in that part, however, and I was about to select a place for a camp and indicate it to my wagoner, when a slight movement at the head of a brushy draw caught my attention. Watching closely I was rewarded in a moment by seeing an Indian rush his pony down into the draw, and in a few moments another stealthily followed him. I had been just alert enough to see the last two Indians of what turned out to be a large band.

Concealing myself, I became the eyewitness of Indian travel tactics. When the band reappeared it had reached the mouth of the draw, and dashed one at a time across to the mouth of another draw breaking down from the plain. They traveled back up this, concealed from all observers, until they would be forced to rush across to the head of another draw and so down it, approaching in this stealthy and devious manner the objective sought.

We drove quickly back to the camp on Deep Creek, content to hunt in more open country.

J. Wright Mooar, “The Killing of the White Buffalo,” Buffalo Days: Stories from J. Wright Mooar as Told to James Winford Hunt, ed. Robert F. Pace (Abilene, TX: State House Press, McMurry University, 2005), 76–81.

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