10/12/2011:
In Dakota Territory, the last years of buffalo hunting centered on the badlands of the Little Missouri River. Officials at the Standing Rock Reservation allowed certain tribesmen to participate in buffalo hunts under the Indian agent's directions. In October of 1880, "nearly one third of all the male Indians" at Standing Rock went on a buffalo hunt. A year later, agent James McLaughlin, granted permission for 200 Indians to hunt buffalo on the reservation. And in the summer of 1882, McLaughlin himself accompanied a hunting party totaling "six hundred mounted hunters." In the fall, "about 200 Indians . . . rounded up 1,480 buffalos."
The last hunt of a large herd came in October, 1883. In late September a large herd of buffalo, 10,000 in number, was found about 80 miles west of the Standing Rock agency. A tribal hunting party of 3,000 Dakota men and women, of which 600 were hunters, set out to find the herd on October 1.
In order to keep the buffalo within the reservation boundaries, scouts set fire to the grass. The flames also steered the buffalo away from white buffalo hunters near Dickinson.
The Standing Rock hunters, according to the Bismarck Tribune published on this date in 1883, killed over 1,100 buffalo on their first day of hunting on October 6. During the next two days, the Indians shot 5,000 bison. The group skinned and butchered the immense number of animals for three or four days; returning to the reservation on October 13th or 14th.
The white buffalo hunters then had their turn. Vic Smith of Dickinson, Frank Chase, and a host of white hunters took part in the killing of the last five thousand buffalo. Vic Smith declared that "when we got through [with] the hunt, there was not a hoof left."
No one really realized at the time that the last large herd of wild buffalo in the U.S. had perished there in northern Dakota Territory, near Hettinger and Dickinson.
For the Plains Indian tribes, the passing of the herds brought great sorrow. With the loss of their food source came the loss of their independence, for they now relied on the United States government for their very survival.
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck, History Department, MSU Moorhead.
SOURCES:
"Buffalo Near Bismarck," Bismarck Tribune, 12 October 1883, 3.
Letter of James H. Stewart, Acting U.S. Indian Agent at Standing Rock to E. M. Marble, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 19 October 1880, page 4, Document # S 3290, Letters Received By the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824-1880, Standing Rock Agency, 1875-1880, National Archives Microfilm Publications #234, Roll 852. The sanctioning of the hunt was controversial, see Harold Umber, "Interdepartmental Conflict Between Fort Yates and Standing Rock: Problems of Indian Administration, 1870-1881," North Dakota History, vol. 39, no. 3 (Summer 1972), 12.
Letter of James McLaughlin to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 7 October 1881, 1, document # 18063, Letters Received By the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, National Archives Microfilm, Roll 32.
Mr. West Laughlin of La Grace, a new town near Fort Yates, estimated the hunting party as numbering 3,000, in Bismarck Weekly Tribune, 2 November 1883, page 4, column 1. An article from the La Moure Progress also put the total at 3,000, as reprinted in The Dickinson Press, 27 October 1883, page 4, column 1. "Buffalo Near Bismarck," Bismarck Tribune, 12 October 1883, 3, also puts the number of hunters at 3,000.
“Indian Matters," Bismarck Tribune, 30 November 1883, 1.
Dickinson Press, 27 October 1883, page 4, column 1.
The Dickinson Press, 24 November 1883, page 1, column 6.
The Dickinson Press, 6 October 1883, page 1, column 6.
"Indian Matters," Bismarck Tribune, 30 November 1883, 1.
Dickinson Press, 13 October 1883, page 4, column 1; and 20 October 1883, page 1, column 7.
Vic. Smith quoted in William Temple Hornaday, The Extermination of the American Bison, Vol. IV (Ann Arbor, MI: Xerox University Microfilms, 1975), 512.