Railroads spelled doom for the Buffalo

Anthropologists estimate that between 30 and 60 million buffalo roamed the Great Plains prior to the arrival of white settlers and the railroads. The animals were essential to the survival of the Native Americans who utilized every part of the mammal for food, clothing, housing, tools and more.

The building of the railroads divided the original great body of bison into southern and northern herds with the southern herd containing an estimated 3,000,000 bison in 1871. The large herds were menacing and impeded work during the construction of the rails besides causing train delays once the roads were completed. In the fall of 1874 came the report of thousands of buffalo coming into the Arkansas Valley and crossing the A,T&SF going north. The herd reportedly stretched from Kinsley to Lakin with two thousand bison crossing just a few miles east of Lakin. Guy Potter, a manager for the railroad dining hall and hotel in Lakin, recalled being aboard a train which was delayed for one hour and forty minutes waiting for buffalo to cross the track. He witnessed the brakeman shooting 13 bison that day from the caboose.

Buffalo hunting became a profitable business for some and a sport for others, promoted not only by the railroads but also the U.S. government which sought to control the Native Americans by eliminating their food supply. The killing was vast and relentless. Hunters were known to kill hundreds of bison in a matter of days and thousands in a matter of months. Some of the meat and robes were harvested; often they were left to rot where they dropped. In December of 1872, J.B. Edwards and George Smith set up a temporary trading post at Lakin to supply the railroad construction crews. Edwards recalled that they did not sell much merchandise in their near month-long stay here, but they did buy and ship a carload of buffalo hides. After John O’Loughlin’s arrival here, the sight of buffalo hams curing in the sun on the roof of his dug-out was a common occurrence.

One of the picturesque figures of the southwest and subject of the book, “A Mighty Hunter”, Charles Youngblood lived in Lakin for a short time. Most of the meat from Youngblood’s hunts was sold to the local dining house or shipped to hotels in the Harvey House chain. He also supplied trainmen, emigrants and others with buffalo and antelope meat. Landlord Potter arranged with Youngblood to act as a guide for parties who paid the hunter $3 to $5 a day to participate in buffalo hunting excursions. These parties were made up of adventurous Easterners, railroad men and officials, land speculators, and even curious Englishmen who had crossed the great Atlantic just for a chance to shoot an American bison.

The killing of the buffalo gave rise to yet another money-making enterprise for Lakin and other sidings along the railroad. Bison bones were the first crop gathered by many penniless homesteaders on the plains. The bones were shipped east to factories where they were ground and used in the manufacture of fertilizer, bone china, buttons, umbrella handles, glue and more. Billy Russell recalled seeing huge piles of bones stacked along the railroad track when he first arrived here in 1881. In 1885, the going rate for bones gathered and delivered to Lakin was $10 per ton.

In 1882, the Lakin Herald reported that the only remaining buffalo in this vicinity had been sold to Fred Harvey and taken to New Mexico where the cow was to be kept as a curiosity for eastern tourists. Captured by Alonzo Boylan when but a calf, the buffalo had spent four years running with Boylan’s cattle.

By 1890, the American bison was on the verge of extinction with estimated figures of 300 to 1,000 head in the continental United States. The senseless slaughter is considered one of the greatest wildlife tragedies in the history of modern man.