A BIOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NORTH DAKOTA

[p.19] Class MAMMALIA: Vertebrate Animals That Nurse Their Young

Order ARTIODACTYLA: Hoofed Animals--Cattle, Sheep, Goats, Antelope, and Deer

Family BOVIDAE: Cattle, Sheep, and Goats

Bison bison bison (Linnaeus)
American Bison; American Buffalo

Te of the Omahas (Gilmore); Pte of the Dakotas (Gilmore) and Mandans (Will); Mité of the Hidatas (Matthews); Tanaha of the Arikaras (Gilmore).

[Bos] bison Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, t. 1, p. 72, 1758.
      Type locality.--Indefinite.
      General characters.--The American buffalo, or bison, is so well known as a feature of all western description and travel and from picture, statue, and the currency and coin of the Republic, as well as from the examples still preserved in public and private parks, that it needs no detailed description. A large buffalo bull described by Audubon (1897, p. 111), killed by one of the party at Fort Union (now Buford), in 1843, measured from tip of nose to root of tail, 131 inches; tail vertebrae, 15½ inches; hair on end of tail, 11 inches. When cut into pieces it weighed 1,777 pounds--it was not fat, and would have weighed 2,000 pounds if it had been in better condition. In his detailed description of the buffalo, Audubon (1851-1854, vol. 2, p. 44, 1851) says that very large bulls generally weigh about 2,000 pounds and cows about 1,200 pounds. These approximate weights are in accord with some recent records.
      Early abundance.--Until the beginning of the past century, buffalo ranged over all of North Dakota in vast herds. Although no approximate estimate of their numbers is possible, the abundance of the animals is attested by vivid statements of early explorers. Alexander Henry (the younger) (1897, pp. 84, 162, 167, 208-209) recorded them in immense numbers along the Red River Valley in September, 1800, and on January 1, 1801, near the junction of the Park and Red Rivers, as in great abundance, the Plains entirely covered, the animals moving in a body from north to south; and on January 14 of the same year, he says:
      At daybreak I was awakened by the bellowing of buffaloes. . . . On my right the Plains were black, and appeared as if in motion. . . . and on my left, to the utmost extent of the reach below us, the river was covered with buffalo moving northward. . . . I dressed and climbed my oak for a better view. I had seen almost incredible numbers of buffalo in the fall but nothing in comparison to what I now beheld. The ground was covered at every point of the compass, as far as the eye could reach, and every animal was in motion.
      In January, 1803, on a trip from Park River, N. Dak., to Riding Mountain, Manitoba, he says "we never marched a day without passing herds of buffaloes;" and men who "have lately been up as far as Goose River, tell me the buffalo continue in abundance [p.20] from this place to that river and as far as the eye could reach southward."
      On October 19, 1804, Lewis and Clark (1893, pp. 172, 174, 175, 276, 278, 282, 286) counted 52 herds from a single point on the Missouri River, 11 miles above Fort Rice; the next day they saw great numbers on the flats just below where Bismarck now stands, and the following day a little farther up the river found the Plains covered with herds. As they journeyed toward the Mandan villages, where they spent the winter, herds of buffalo were frequently seen, although during the winter the Indians had to make many hunting trips to bring back a meat supply. Again in the following April, as the expedition proceeded up the river, numerous buffalo herds were encountered, and great numbers of carcasses of drowned animals were seen floating in the current or stranded along the shores. On the broad flats at the mouths of the Little Missouri, the Muddy, and the Yellowstone, buffalo were reported in "vast herds" and immense quantities. In 1811 between the Arikaree and Mandan villages Brackenridge (1816, pp. 133-134) says, "I discovered in every direction immense herds of buffaloe . . . in this [small] valley there appeared to be several thousand . . . armies of buffaloe all in motion as far as the eye could distinguish in every direction."
      In 1833, Maximilian (Wied, 1839-1841, Bd. 2, p. 84, 1841) found buffalo abundant throughout the North Dakota section of his trip up the Missouri River, except near the larger Indian settlements, where persistent hunting kept them at times at considerable distances. During the migrations, however, as the great herds swept back and forth from summer to winter range, they came close to the villages. While wintering at Fort Clark, Maximilian says the herds did not appear in the immediate vicinity except when the weather was very severe, because they were too much disturbed by the numerous Indians in the neighborhood. The hunters of the fort were often obliged to ride 20 miles before finding them. In the cold snowstorms, so prevalent during the winter, the animals took refuge in the forests on the banks, where great numbers were killed and where it was almost impossible to drive them out of the woods. Their bones and skulls, scattered all over the ground, prove the immense destruction of these harmless animals.
      At Fort Union on the upper Missouri, Audubon (1851-1854, vol. 2, p. 47, 1851) in 1843, gave a good idea of the immense numbers of bison on the wild prairies at that time in an account of a trip by Mr. Kipp, one of the principals of the American Fur Company, from Travers Bay on Lake Winnipeg to the Mandan Nation on the Missouri River. In August, 11 in a cart heavily laden, he [Kipp] passed through herds of buffalo for six days in succession. At another time he saw the great prairie near Fort Clark on the Missouri River, almost blackened by these animals, which covered the plain to the hills that bounded the view in all directions." On his return trip down the Missouri in August, Audubon (1897, pp. 154-155) also saw great numbers of buffalo and said the roaring of the bulls was like the long continuous roll of a hundred drums, and could be heard for miles; while the animals were seen all over the prairies and river bars and many were swimming in the river.
      [p.21] In 1845 Father De Smet, (1905, p. 657) on crossing the Missouri River west of Fort Union, said: "the whole space between the Missouri and the Yellowstone was covered [with buffalo] as far as the eye could reach . . . During a whole week we heard their bellowings like the noise of distant thunder, or like the murmurs of the ocean waves beating against the shore."
      In "A story of 53," of the fur-trading days at Walhalla, Charles Cavileer states that 10,000 to 12,000 buffalo robes, worth $1.25 to $2.50 each, were brought in to that post each year.
      In the spring of 1862, on the Missouri River, A. R. Wilcox (1907, p. 46) writes:
      At two different times our steamboat was obliged to stop, and tie up alongside the shore to avoid the immense herds of buffalo that were floating down the river. The first drove we encountered was near where Bismarck in North Dakota is now located. The river was nearly half a mile wide and was filled nearly its entire width with live buffaloes, and they were at least half an hour in passing. We encountered the other drove a little above the mouth of the Yellowstone and it must have contained at least 20,000 animals.
      L. C. Ives, of Veblen, S. Dak., told the writer that his company of cavalry, the Second Minnesota Volunteers, on their return trip from an Indian expedition up the Yellowstone in 1863, encountered untold thousands of buffalo on the prairies east of the Missouri River.
      In July, 1866, R. M. Probsfield (Wilcox, 1907, p. 50) reported a herd on the North Dakota side of the Red River about 18 miles north of Fargo. He says: "There may have been 10,000 or 100,000 of them . . . as we could not see their limit either north or west." The next herd, only 25 in all, was seen in 1867, and another small herd in 1868 in the same vicinity on the east side of the river.
      Often the early travelers reported days without seeing buffalo, or only scattered bunches or occasional individuals, from which to draw their meat supply. The great numbers seen at certain times and places were usually the migrating bands that swept back and forth from north to south or east to west, according to season or the abundance or scarcity of food and water. But, while migratory in habits, the buffalo did not entirely leave the State at any time of year, nor apparently any considerable part of it, as the fall and spring herds swept in a general way north and south, those from farther north and farther south coming in to replace those that drifted beyond its borders and to fatten on the rich summer grasses or to paw through the winter snow for the still abundant supply of well-cured prairie grass underneath. The country was well stocked but not overstocked. The buffalo had reached a fair equilibrium between natural increase and annual loss, loss from wolves, bears, and native hunters, and from quicksand, water, rotten ice, blizzards, and prairie fires.2
      Natural checks on abundance.--At his winter quarters on the Park River, where it joins the Red River, Alexander Henry (1897, pp. 174, 175, 177, 253, 254) writes in his journal, on March 31, 1801: "Rain broke up the ice . . . It continued to drift. . . . bearing [p.22] great numbers of dead buffalo from above, which must have been drowned in attempting to cross while the ice was weak." On April 1, he says: "The river is clear of ice, but drowned buffalo continue to drift by entire herds . . . It is really astonishing what vast numbers have perished; they formed one continuous line in the current for two days and nights. One of my men found a herd that had fallen through the ice in Park River and all been drowned; they were sticking in the ice, which had not yet moved in that part." On April 18 he records "drowned buffalo still drifting down the river but not in such vast numbers as before"; and on May 1, "The stench from the vast numbers of drowned buffalo along the river was intolerable . . . Two hunters arrived in a skin canoe from Grandes Fourches with 30 beaver and 7 bear skins. They tell me the number of buffalo lying along the beach and on the banks above, passes all imagination; they form one continuous line, and emit a horrid stench. I am informed that every spring it is about the same." Similar accounts of buffalo in the Missouri River are found in journals of the early explorers.
      In the Hair Hills, at the source of Salt River, on November 25, 1803, Henry saw the effects of fire on the buffalo and writes:
      Plains burned in every direction and blind buffalo seen every moment wandering about. The poor beasts have all the hair singed off; even the skin in many places is shriveled up and terribly burned, and their eyes are swollen and closed fast. . . . In one spot we found a whole herd lying dead. The fire having passed only yesterday these animals were still good and fresh, and many of them exceedingly fat. . . . At sunset we arrived at the Indian camp, having made an extraordinary day's ride, and seen an incredible number of dead and dying, blind, lame, singed, and roasted buffalo. The fire raged all night toward the S. W.
      Extermination by man.--Although natural losses among the buffalo herds were at times great, they were local and irregular. With the advent of the white trappers and traders with powder and ball, and later of the skin hunters with better rifles, the long-established equilibrium was destroyed, and as settlements crept in the buffalo were crowded back or killed for local supply of meat and robes, and the great herds were followed and exterminated for their skins by gangs of men employed for the purpose. Old hunters have told of shooting 75 to 100 buffalo a day, from which their skinners would remove the hides and pin them to the ground to be dried and later hauled by teams to the nearest river or railway point for transportation. In the seventies the principal cargo of boats coming down the river from Fort Benton to Bismarck consisted of buffalo hides, more than 60,000 having been shipped down by one firm. Big wages were paid and big profits realized.
      The first record of the buffalo receding before the settlement of the area now included within the State of North Dakota was in 1821, by Alexander Ross (1856, pp. 57, 100, 255, 257, 267), who reported them as becoming scarce in the vicinity of Pembina, and in 1826 as apparently not found without going 150 or 200 miles beyond Pembina. In 1840, he says the Pembina hunters went 250 miles in the direction of the Sheyenne River for buffalo, and in 1840 he prophesied that the end of the buffalo was fast approaching. Thenceforth the history of the buffalo becomes the history of their slaughter and rapid disappearance. On July 4, 1840, Ross records [p.23] a buffalo hunt organized and carried to the vicinity of the Sheyenne River, west of Fargo. The herds were located and on the evening of the first day's hunt 1,375 tongues were brought into camp and more than 2,000 buffalo were estimated killed by the 400 mounted hunters.
      In September, 1861, Charles E. Patton and party, traveling west from the Red River Valley, saw the first buffalo and killed seven, about one day east of Devils Lake. A few days later 15 more were seen and 2 killed, a half day west of Sullys Hill. One day farther west herds of 15 and 20 were seen and the main great herd was near.
      At Devils Lake, in 1916, Frank Palmer said that in 1866, on a trip in Minnesota and North Dakota, the first buffalo in any abundance were encountered on the James River near the southern border of the State. In 1868 when he came to Devils Lake they were getting scarce near the fort and the Indians were in the habit of making trips to procure their meat supply. In 1869 and 1870 they were getting scarce all around the lake and hunting for hides had begun on a commercial basis. (Hornaday, 1889, pp. 507-508.) Near Valley City the last buffalo was killed in 1874.3
      A surveying party in charge of George G. Beardsley in 1874 encountered a herd of buffaloes numbering about 300 near the Hawk's Nest Buttes, not far from where Carrington now stands. The next year these were all killed (Wilcox, 1907, pp. 51, 53).
      In 1876 the Northern Pacific Railway reached Bismarck and diverted most of the cargoes of buffalo hides from the Missouri at that point, but only incomplete records were kept of the shipments. In 1881 more than 75,000 hides were shipped out from there, but these were mainly of animals killed in Montana. (Hornaday, 1889, pp507508).
      Mr. Holes, who settled at Fargo in 1871, told the writer that the nearest buffalo then were found on the prairies south of Devils Lake. J A. Allen (1875, pp. 39-40) says the last buffalo killed near Fort Rice was in 1869, when three were killed from a herd of 10 old bulls which had strayed far eastward from the main herds. In 1915, Remington Kellogg was told that the last buffalo seen in the Goose River country was killed in March, 1878.
      Some of the old settlers reported in 1916 that the last buffalo was killed near Cannon Ball in the seventies. In June, 1882, the last great buffalo hunt of North Dakota took place on the headwaters of the Cannonball River, where 600 Indian hunters, well mounted and well armed, killed in a two-days' hunt 5,000 animals, as vividly described by Major McLaughlin (1910, pp. 97-116), who took part in the hunt.
      The Fargo Record reports an old bull killed near Sykeston, in Wells County, in 1881, and E. E. Booth, of Minot, tells of one seen near Sawyer, in the same county in 1883, which was chased by horsemen but not caught. He says the animals were still common in the Dickinson country in 1882. Near Stump Lake the writer was told that the last buffalo ever seen in that region was a lone wanderer seen and chased, but not killed, in the winter of 1881-82.
      In 1918, at Fort Clark, Stanley G. Jewett learned from old hunters that the last buffalo in that region was killed by Joe Taylor during [p.24] the fall of 1884. At Medora he was informed that the last killed was in the neighboring hills in 1884; and at Sentinel Butte, Lewis F. Crawford told him that so far as he knew, the last one killed in the State was in the country south of Dickinson in 1884.
      There may be later records for the State, but even those of 1884 were of scattered individuals missed in the big hunts that had swept the main herds out of existence.
      Present-day remains.--To-day a buffalo robe or coat is rarely seen and the few remaining are greatly prized. A few mounted heads are still preserved in museums and public places.
      In 1887 when the writer first visited North Dakota, heaps of bones, mainly of buffalo, were commonly found at the stations along the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways. Great piles of bones were often seen near the sidetrack, waiting until enough more were brought in to load one or more freight cars for shipment to fertilizer plants. Almost perfect buffalo skulls and horns were found in these bone piles but unfortunately the importance of saving series of skulls for future study was not then appreciated.
      Buffalo bones have now almost disappeared from the surface of the prairies, but they are still abundant under ground and under water. The marshy and springy places around the edges of lakes or along the river valleys fairly bristle with them. The shores and beaches of Devils Lake, Stump Lake, and the Sweetwater Lakes are strewn with sue characteristic bones as the skulls, vertebrae with the long dorsal processes which supported the hump, and pieces of the rough black horns always distinguishable at a glance from those of cattle. Even the islands in the middle of Devils Lake are thickly strewn with buffalo bones, the unrecorded history of which is well understood by reading the accounts of Alexander Henry, Lewis and Clark, and others, of the thousands of buffalo carcasses found in spring floating down the rivers when the ice was melting and breaking up.
      Every lake and river in North Dakota seems to have trapped the buffalo during their abundance, while marshes, bogs, and spring holes drew heavily upon their numbers. The spring and fall migrations were in large part responsible for these fatal results, as rivers and lakes must necessarily be crossed or the migrating herds be checked or change their courses. For ages to come, well-preserved skeletons will be found embedded in the mud and silt, and still more perfect specimens in the oozy bogs of cold and mineral-impregnated water so common in the State.
      The old buffalo trails have not all disappeared. In many places they are still deep and well preserved in the tough prairie sod or on steep sidehills and Badlands buttes, where not disturbed by the plow or by the less hardy domestic stock.
      Buffalo wallows, little prairie basins that caught the rain and were used for mud baths by molting bulls with itching hides, are still found in great numbers not only on level areas but on hilltops and along the crests of ridges. Rubbing stones, great granite bowlders high enough to reach the itching sides of the buffalo, still stand on the prairie or on morainal ridges where they have been rubbed and polished until their sides are smooth and glossy, and [p.25] the earth around them has been trampled and blown away, leaving them like inverted cups standing in deep saucers of earth.
      The survivors.--Of living buffalo, there are many in private and public parks, and a small national herd is maintained in the Sullys Hill Park, on the south side of Devils Lake. These are hardy and bid fair to keep the species permanently within the borders of the State as a reminder of the romantic days when tribes of wild Indians and herds of wild bison roamed at will over the great prairies and sought the shade and shelter of the groves on the margins of streams and lakes.

Ovis canadensis auduboni Merriam
Audubon Mountain Sheep

Bighorn of the Badlands; Ansa-chta of the Mandans (Will); Hekinskagi (Hekinshkagi) of the Dakotas (Gilmore); Azichtia of the Hidatsas (Matthews) ; Arikusa of the Arikaras (Gilmore).

Ovis canadensis auduboni Merriam, Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., vol. 14, p. 31, 1901.
      Type locality.--"Upper Missouri," probably the Badlands between the Cheyenne and White Rivers, S. Dak. Type specimen supposed to have been collected by F. V. Hayden in 1855. [See original description.]
      General characters.--Fully as large or larger than Ovis canadensis, molars and jaws much heavier. Audubon (1851-1854, vol. 2, p. 165, 1851) gives the color of July specimens as light grayish brown, rump and underparts, grayish white; and the weight of a male as 344 pounds, and of a female as 240 pounds.
      Distribution, habitat, and habits.--Lewis and Clark in 1805, Maximilian in 1833, and Audubon in 1843, in their trips up the Missouri River, found mountain sheep on the Badlands bluffs between the points where the Little Knife and White Earth Rivers join the Missouri from the north, below the mouth of Muddy River, and near the junction of the Yellowstone with the Missouri. Maximilian reported them as abundant in the "Black Hills," where the Indians went to hunt them, and on his map includes under this name the Killdeer Mountains and Badlands along the Little Missouri River. At Fort Clark he (Wied 1839-1841, Bd. 2 p. 85, 1841) said they were not found within 50 miles, which may have been either north or west, but was probably both. Apparently the original range of the bighorn in North Dakota included all of the very rough Badlands country along and west of the Missouri River. Howard Eaton in the seventies, and Theodore Roosevelt in the eighties, killed mountain sheep in the Badlands along the Little Missouri, but they were then no longer abundant; and at the present time there is probably not a live wild mountain sheep in the State, nor one of this subspecies in existence.
      The history of the bighorn in North Dakota is in a small way like that of the buffalo--a record of extermination. In 1804, Lewis and Clark (1893, pp. 150, 214, 284) reported bighorns in the Badlands west of the Missouri River. At the Mandan villages they saw sheep horns among the Indians, and near the mouth of the Yellowstone one of their men met several of the bighorn animals, but they were too shy to be obtained.
      [p.26] In 1833, Maximilian, Prince of Wied (1839-1841, Bd. 1, p. 423, 1839; Bd. 2, pp. 85, 309, 315, 1841), on his way up the Missouri to Fort Clark and Fort Union and thence west to Fort McKenzie and back to Fort Clark, where he spent the winter of 1833-34 among the Mandan Indians, first saw mountain sheep above the mouth of the Little Knife River. Later he found them below the mouth of the Muddy River and near the mouth of the Yellowstone, while among the Mandans and Minnetarees he found beautiful shirts made of bighorn leather. The Minnetarees, he said, went to the Black Hills and other mountainous tracts to hunt, and killed a hundred or more sheep in a season. Among the Mandans and some of the other tribes he found the horns in use as bowls or ladles.
      Audubon (1897, pp. 24, 28, 40) saw his first bighorns in 1843 on the summit of a hill above the mouth of the Little Knife River, quite probably the same butte on which Maximilian had seen them 10 years before, and he was told by the captain of the steamer that they had been seen there on his previous trip up the river. He saw others 6 miles below the mouth of the Muddy River, and near the mouth of the Yellowstone he saw a mixed band of 22, including rams, ewes, and one lamb (June 12). Many others were seen by members of his party, but it was with great difficulty that his hunters obtained enough sheep for his drawings and for a few specimens to be brought back. The sheep were very shy and kept on the highest and roughest parts of the Badlands buttes. He says, "I am told that the Rocky Mountain rams lost most of their young during the hard frosts of the early spring; for, like those of the common sheep, the lambs are born as early as the 1st of March, and hence their comparative scarcity." This explanation suggests some more recent theories to account for the scarcity of game, but with wolves and coyotes as abundant as they were at that time, the wonder is that any lambs could escape to grow up, even on the very rough slopes that afforded the only protection to the adults.
      In 1860, J. G. Cooper (1869, p. 296) reported mountain sheep along the rocky bluffs bordering the Missouri River "above the Great Bend," but this record is indefinite, as most of his notes refer to the part of his trip from Fort Buford west to Fort Stanton, Mont.
      A. McG. Beede, who has had long acquaintance with the Indians and is familiar with their language, hunting lore, and traditions, says that there never were any mountain sheep near the Missouri at Cannon Ball, but that formerly the Indians went farther west to hunt them.
      Howard Eaton stated that in October, 1879, he killed two mountain sheep on Bullion Butte, a high plateau about 20 miles south of Medora. He also captured a live ewe on or near the butte and sent it to the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens, and he had killed many more in the Badlands of the Little Missouri.
      In the early eighties Theodore Roosevelt (1900b, pp. 73-105) hunted mountain sheep in the Badlands along the Little Missouri, and although much hard hunting was required for the few mountain sheep seen and the one fine ram killed, he has given us the best account of the habits and haunts of this species to be found in literature.
      [p.27] In 1913, Stanley G. Jewett, while in the Killdeer Mountains, was told by Mike Caskelly, of Oakdale, N. Dak., that three mountain sheep were found in the Killdeer Mountains in 1988. For several days they were seen feeding on the ridge above his ranch, where the present town of Oakdale now stands. Two of these were killed by Caskelly's brother. In 1915, Remington Kellogg saw a mounted mountain sheep head at the home of Charles W. Hoffman, principal of the Indian School at Shell Village. It was one of three killed by an Indian (Birdsbill) in 1898 from a bunch of five in the Badlands of the Little Missouri just outside the reservation. Later a photograph was obtained of this head. On Magpie Creek, a branch of the Little Missouri, west of the Killdeer Mountains, Jewett saw an old weathered horn that had been picked up a few years previously, and ranchmen told him that mountain sheep had formerly ranged over the rough hills along Magpie Creek. The last one known there was an old ram killed about 1905, the head of which was in the possession of a ranchman near Quinion. So far as known this is the last record for the State, although there are somewhat later reports of the species from the Badlands of South Dakota.
      In the destructive and constructive periods of the West, as it passed from savage to civilized life, the bighorn of this open and accessible area contributed its all. Besides its most savory of wild meats, its magnificent head and horns offered a highly prized trophy not often obtained in the low country or where hunting on horseback was possible. Whether for sport or profit there was always a high price on the head of the bighorn, and this spells the doom of any species.

Family ANTILOCAPRIDAE: Pronghorned Antelope

Antilocapra americana americana (Ord)
Pronghorned Antelope; American Antelope; Pronghorn

(Pl. 7)

Koka of the Mandans (Will); Tatókana of the Dakotas (Beede); Uchi of the Hidatsas (Matthews); Chka of the Arikaras (Gilmore).

Antelope americana Ord. Guthrie's Geog., 2d Amer. ed., vol. 2, pp. 292, 308, 1815). (Reprint by S. N. Rhoads, 1894).
Antilocapra americana Ord, Journ. Phys. [Paris), vol. 87, p. 149, 1818.
      Type locality.--Plains and highlands of the Missouri River.
      General characters.--Size of a small deer, very slender, graceful, and swift. The striking characters are the flat-pronged and hooked horns, which are shed and renewed each year, the mere stump of a tail, the great white rump patch that is spread in a wide rosette or closed down at will, and the strongly contrasted buff and black and white markings. It is neither a true antelope nor a goat, but belongs to a family of one-pronged deciduous-horned animals including one species and several geographic races peculiar to North America.
      Distribution, habitat, and habits.--Antelope originally ranged over nearly all of the open country of North Dakota. It is doubtful that they ever penetrated the timbered area of the Turtle Mountains to any extent, [p.28] and they seem to have been always absent or scarce in the immediate Valley Of the Red River. 0n his numerous trips up and down the Red River Valley from 1800 to 1806, Alexander Henry (1897, p. 191) never mentioned them except for one brought him by an indian at Pembina, November 15, 1801. At Fargo, James Holes, one of the early settlers, said in 1912 that as long ago as 1871 there had been no antelope nearer than the western part of Cass County, where they were abundant until at least 1879. In 1887 at Pembina the writer heard that they were still found in the Pembina Hills, 34 miles west of the Red River, and all along the valley they were reported west of the low, flat bottom of old Lake Agassiz. Perhaps their range was established before the lake disappeared, but more probably the tall grass and rich waxy soil kept them away from the valley bottom.
      Early abundance.--in 1804, Lewis and Clark (1893, pp. 170, 174, 190, 211) reported great numbers of "goats" (antelope) along the Missouri River. On October 16, 9 miles below the mouth of Cannonball River, they recorded great numbers on the banks and in the river, where they were driven by the indians and killed with sticks and guns. Again, great numbers were seen on the wide flats just below Bismarck and about their camp above Mandan, where 100 were caught at one time in a pen by the indians. The explorers were told that the antelope were then on their fall migration west to the "Black Mountains" to spend the winter, but would return to the plains east of the Missouri in spring; and as the party continued up the river the following April, after wintering at the Mandan villages, they met the returning antelope in great numbers.
      In August, 1806, Alexander Henry (1897, p. 410) reported numerous herds of "cabbrie" (antelope) on his way from Mouse River to Fort Union. In 1833, Maximilian (Wied, 1839-1841, Bd. 2 p. 84 1841; 1843, p. 246) says the "cabri" or antelope (Antilocapra Ord), lived the whole year in the immediate vicinity of Fort Clark. In the summer great numbers congregated, going in the winter toward the mountains, where they found protection from the snow, and returning in April, when large bands of them were seen about the Missouri. Their migrations were by no means checked by the Missouri River as bands were frequently seen swimming across, and the great prairies east and north of the river were a favorite summer range as the Badlands of the Little Missouri, the Powder, and the Cheyenne Rivers (South Dakota) were a favorite winter resort for the antelope of that region.
      In 1873 from Fort Abraham Lincoln west to the Little Missouri J. A. Allen (1875, p. 40) found antelope the most abundant game animal, almost constantly in sight and attracting much attention for their grace and beauty. On his return trip a few months later a fatal epizootic had raged among the pronghorns over nearly the whole area between the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, destroying apparently three-fourths to nine-tenths of the animals. For the whole length of the Heart River, considerably over 100 miles, along the line of march, he says, their carcasses were thickly scattered and included both sexes and all ages, fawns often lying within a few yards of their dams. There were 10 dead seen to every live antelope, but the disease had apparently not extended beyond the Yellowstone or Missouri Rivers.
      [p.29] Decrease in abundance.--in later years the disappearance of the antelope over the State has been not so much in advance of settlement as in the case of the buffalo, but has been coincident with the early filling up of each section of their range by settlers. Frank Palmer, of Devils Lake, told the writer that antelope were numerous in that part of the State up to 1872 and common to 1876, while a few remained into the eighties. Mr. Holes, of Fargo, reports "lots" of antelope seen in the western part of Cass County in 1879. In 1877 a herd estimated at 3,000 was seen by J. S. Weiser between Valley City and Jamestown. From 1878 to 1880 they were common about Valley City, according to John Hailand and as many as 200 were seen in a bunch. In 1882 a "whole herd" of antelope was seen on Judge Green's farm, southwest of Valley City, by D. W. Clark, and in 1892, ex-Governor Frank White saw eight antelope near Valley City. In 1887 the animals were reported as still common in the Mouse River country, a few were still found in the Pembina Hills and country east of the Turtle Mountains, and a bunch of 14 had wintered near Devils Lake. In 1891 and 1892 Elmer T. Judd killed several near Canby, but they were the last he knew of in that section of the State. At Stump Lake the writer was told in 1912 that antelope were abundant over the prairies during the eighties and that the last few individuals had disappeared in 1909 or 1910. A few were reported on the prairies west of the Turtle Mountains in 1909, but the latest record available at Crosby, in the northwestern corner of the State, was of three seen in 1906, although they had been numerous there until about 1903.
      In 1915, Remington Kellogg was told of one recently seen near Lostwood Lake in the northern part of Mountrail County, but it is doubtful if there are at present any remaining east or north of the Missouri River.
      West of the river, the more arid prairies have been used as stock range and only in recent years have filled up with grain farms and close settlement, to which fact, and to the fact that the areas of rough Badlands country are unsuited to farming, the antelope owe their present though scant existence in the State. In the early eighties Roosevelt (1900c, pp. 72, 77-80, 97-98, 119-120) found them still abundant in places. On one trip with the round-up between the Little Missouri and the Yellowstone, he wrote: "Antelope were very plentiful, running like race-horses across the level, or uttering their queer, barking grunt as they stood at gaze, the white hairs on their rumps all on end, their neck bands of broken brown and white vivid in the sunlight." Being detailed to get antelope meat for the round-up camp, he says: "There was no lack of the game i was after, for from every rise of ground i could see antelope scattered across the prairie, singly, in couples, or in bands." They were wild and in open country, but he managed to bring in three to the camp that night. One December in the eighties, making a trip of about 20 miles from his ranch to where a band of antelope were wintering, he found a herd of several hundred and killed an old buck and a yearling to take back for meat. The others ran around him, but would not leave the flat for the broken country and deep snowdrifts beyond. He says: "Their evident and extreme reluctance to venture into the broken country roundabout made me [p.30] readily understand the tales i had heard of game butchers killing over a hundred individuals at a time out of a herd so situated." Again, he says: "Several times i killed and brought in prong bucks, rising before dawn, and riding off on a good horse for our all-day's hunt on the rolling prairie country 12 or 15 miles away" [from his ranch].
      In 1893, A. K. Fisher reported antelope as still common within 25 miles of Medora, where J. L. Foley had killed 13 on one trip the previous fall. In 1909 the farmers reported a bunch of 20 that had been seen a little west of Fort Clark a couple of years before.
      In 1913, Charles Converse said there were still a few antelope about Schafer and Alexander; and Stanley G. Jewett reported a few still on the rolling prairie around the Killdeer Mountains, where the settlers told him it was not uncommon to see them anywhere in the open country north and west from Oakdale to the Little Missouri. At the Q-Bar ranch, on Magpie Creek, he was told of five antelope often seen on the hills to the east of the ranch house, but no others were known in that vicinity. At Medora, he learned that there were still a few on the plains about 30 miles south of there, where a doe and a fawn had recently been seen by a ranchman, and where four others were reported by a local surveyor. At Sentinel Butte, Mr. Crawford told him of a band of 17, which he had seen a few miles south of town two years previously, and of one that was frequently seen on the hills north of town during the summer of 1912. In August, 1913, there were about 30 antelope ranging on the Dakota National Forest, some 25 miles south of Medora, and a few on the big flats south of Bullion Butte. In 1915, H. H. Sheldon reported about 30 still in and around the national forest, and a few seen on Deep Creek, south of it, but said that they were being frequently killed and were apparently on the decrease. In August and September of 1915 Remington Kellogg reported a buck seen several times in Dunn County, west of Elbowoods, and a few near Goodall in McKenzie County. In 1916 the writer was told that there were still a few antelope in the section about Cannon Ball, and that two had been seen only a few miles west of the town within a few days. The great numbers formerly occupying that region had entirely disappeared.
      A recent report on antelope by E. W. Nelson (1925) gives their present numbers in the State as follows:
      Antelope have almost disappeared from North Dakota. The remaining herds now number only five and aggregate about 225 animals. Their future appears to be extremely doubtful unless a game preserve can be established wherein they may be safeguarded.
      The distribution of the herds [in 1924] is approximately as follows:
      1. In September, 1924, 60 antelope were reported as ranging from northwestern Dunn County into the adjacent part of McKenzie County.
      2. A band of 9 was reported in September, 1924, in southwestern McKenzie County.
      3. About 75 are reported in adjacent parts of central Golden Valley and Billings Counties. This is the largest band reported in the State. William McCarthy, who owns 11,000 acres of rough, rolling land in the heart of the Badlands along the Missouri River, which affords a natural range for game, writes that when he came into possession of the range in 1910 there were about 15 antelope there. Much hunted, they sought and were given every protection in his pastures, where they found running springs and flowing wells with an abundance of grass, and as a result have become very tame.
      [p.31] 4. Bands numbering 55 were reported in September, 1924, in the Badlands of the Little Missouri River in Slope County.
      5. In September, 1924, a band of 26 was reported from southwestern Bowman County.
      Protection for the remnant.--The few antelope still inhabiting the roughest and least-settled parts of the Badlands would doubtless, if taken in time, form the nucleus of a herd that might rescue the species from being wiped out of the State, if not out of existence. If rough land of little value except for forest production and grazing were properly fenced so that the antelope would not stray to unprotected areas, and if coyotes were trapped to a harmless minimum and sheep scab kept out, it would seem that antelope should increase as rapidly as any herd of sheep. There are often, if not usually, two young at a birth, and these rough Badlands buttes and gulches afford the shelter and protection needed from storms and the most severe winter weather. Native plants furnish ample food in short grass for summer and in choice buds and tips of bushes for winter. Away from their native haunts no animals are more difficult to raise and keep in good health; at home no domestic animals are so hard and able to care for themselves under all conditions of weather and climate. Some of the Badlands areas that have been the wonder and admiration of geologists and travelers since the days of the early exploring expeditions could well be used as a preserve to save the antelope. Mule deer, elk, and bison could be added to the preserve thus created, but it is probably too late to rescue the Audubon mountain sheep for the purpose, although they have only recently vanished from the terraces and crests of these brilliantly colored buttes.

Family CERVIDAE: Moose, Elk, Caribou, and Deer

Alces americanus americanus Jardine
Moose

(Pl. 8)

Orignal, of the early French voyageurs; Moose [or Muswa] of the Crees and Ojibways (Seton); Wesucharut of the Arikaras (Gilmore); Ta of the Dakotas (Gilmore); Pachúptaptach of the Mandans (Will).

Alces americanus Jardine, Nat. Libr. Mamm., vol. 3, p. 125, 1835.
      Type locality.--Eastern North America.
      General characters.--The largest of the deer family, with throat pendant, or bell, long legs, short tail, and the dark colors of the deep forest habitat; the bulls with broadly palmate, deciduous horns. Measurements of a large bull by Seton (1909, vol. 1, pp. 145-146), total length, 9 feet, 6½ inches; tail, 2½ inches; hind foot, 31¼ inches; height at shoulders, 6 feet. Weight of very large bulls, 1,300 and 1,400 pounds.
      Distribution and habitat.--Their long legs and wide-spreading hoofs enable moose to wade and swim and pass rapidly through marshes, swamps, and lakes, as well as through dense forests, but these animals avoid the open country as completely as antelope do the timber. From the great forests on the north and east, the moose in the early days entered North Dakota in the Turtle Mountains and along the timbered fringes of the Red River Valley. In 1800, Alexander Henry (1897, pp. 90, 118) stated in his journal that they frequented the mouth of Park River. He also said that the Pembina Hills made a famous country for moose and elk. In 1887, when the writer was at Bottineau, moose were still reported from the Turtle Mountains, and in 1912, records were obtained of some killed there in 1888, 1899, and 1906. The country is ideal for them and the extensive area combines dense forest, thickets, and a network of marshes and lakes, where the tule borders half hide the floating pads and golden globes of the cowlily, forming a perfect moose paradise. It is not improbable that an occasional pair may still stray into these mountains, and if given sufficient protection these might remain to restock their old range. The mounted head to be seen in the agricultural college at Fargo is from a moose killed in 1898 by G. N. Brown at Rock Lake, just east of the Turtle Mountains. At Walhalla the writer learned of one killed near there in 1889.
      In 1915, Remington Kellogg learned of a moose killed 3 miles south of Grafton, in 1900, and another on the Red River, 3 miles cast of Grafton, in 1908. H. V. Williams reported one killed near Glasston in 1905, and another at Drayton, on the Red River, in 1906.
      W. B. Bell reported the capture of a cow moose in Sargent County in the fall of 1913. It was kept captive at the Ellendale industrial School for a time, but later was sent to a public park in Minnesota. A bull and cow and two calves near Mayville, in Traill County, were also reported to Doctor Bell the same year, but the report was not fully verified.
      At the Fort Totten Indian School in 1916, Mr. Zibeau, the agent, said that the old Indians say there used to be moose in the timber around Devils Lake, but the report was not confirmed by the oldest white settlers in that region. The woods on the Sullys Hill Park are well adapted to moose, and it is hoped that sometime they may be added to the attractions of this historic park.
      Few of our large game animals respond more satisfactorily to protection than do moose, as is demonstrated by their abundance and increase in such well-protected areas as in Maine and New Brunswick and in the Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. They have few natural enemies that they can not overcome; they are too conspicuous to be much temptation to poachers; and, like the other deer, they often raise two young in a season. Although one of the most difficult of our native animals to keep in captivity, owing to their peculiar habits of feeding largely on the twigs of shrubs and small trees and from lake bottoms, they are extremely hardy in their natural environment in any sufficiently cold climate.

Rangifer caribou caribou (Gmelin)
Woodland Caribou

[Cervus tarandus] caribou Gmlein, Syst. Nat., 13th ed., vol. 1, p. 177, 1788.
      Type locality.--Eastern Canada.
      General characters.--In size between a large deer and small elk; horns large, with more or less flattened prongs and forks of beams, often with broad, flattened brow prongs in the male; females usually with small horns; feet, large; tail, short; color, dark smoky-gray, with more or less white on neck, feet, and underparts.
      [p.33] Distribution and habitat.--The eastern woodland caribou or closely related forms range through the Canadian Zone from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Rocky Mountains of western Canada, the lower edge of their recent range passing through northern Minnesota and central Manitoba. Their regular range is, therefore, at no great distance to the east and north of the corner of North Dakota, but apparently there are no records of their occurrence within the State since white men have known the region. It would not be strange, however, if at times during their former abundance, bands of this more or less wandering species should have strayed into the Red River Valley and the Turtle Mountain region. That this has been the case is shown by some fragments of old horns picked up in the Turtle Mountains and on exhibit at the museum of the fish hatchery near St. Johns. The writer has not seen these horns, but Mr. Eastgate writes that they are unmistakably those of caribou. If they came from the marshes or springy bogs of that region, they may have been there for many years, possibly centuries; but if from the surface of the ground, they could probably not have lasted more than 50 years at the most, and it is doubtful they would have remained that length of time unless especially well protected.

Cervus canadensis canadensis Erxleben
American Elk; Wapiti

(Pl. 9, fig. 1)

Wapiti of the Shawnees (Handbook Amer. Indians); Wah of the Arikaras (Gilmore); Ompa of the Mandans (Maximilian); Onpa (Will); Anpan of the Omahas (Gilmore); Upan of the Dakotas (Gilmore); Madoka of the Hidatsas (Matthews).

[Cervus elaphus] canadensis Erxleben, Syst. Regni Anim., p. 305, 1777.
      Type locality.--Eastern Canada.
      General characters.--Next to the moose the largest of our deer, adult bulls being estimated to weigh from 700 to 1,000 pounds; adult cows, 500 to 600 pounds. Bulls with long, heavy, rounded, deciduous horns, each with normally six points in adults; cows hornless; tail short. General colors, dark brown with light-brown sides and a conspicuous white or buffy patch on the rump.
      Distribution, habitat, and habits.--Originally elk ranged over all of what is now North Dakota, and were equally at home in the timber and over the open prairie. On his trip up the Red River in 1800, Alexander Henry (1897, pp. 83-85, 108) found them abundant and wrote in his journal of September 5: "Large herds were seen at every turn of the river and the bulls were bugling all through the woods. The rutting season was at its height." During the next six years he frequently mentioned them, and next to the buffalo they seem to have been the main source of meat supply for him and his parties of trappers in the Red River Valley and adjacent country.
      In 1804-5, Lewis and Clark, (1893, pp. 172, 174, 237, 250) recorded elk along the Missouri River all the way through North Dakota. On October 19, 1804, they reported three herds seen from a point 11 [p.34] miles above the site of Fort Rice, and the next day great numbers on the wide river bottoms below where Bismarck now stands. At Fort Clark, where they wintered with the Mandans, elk meat was an important part of their winter provisions. On one hunting trip below the fort, February 2l, l805, they killed 14 elk, and on another trip on April 2, 21. Many herds were noted on the way up the river to Fort Union and beyond in the following April, and the Missouri River Valley seems to have been the great winter resort of the elk of the prairie region at that time.
      In 1833, Maximilian (Wied, 1839-1841, Bd. 2, pp. 18, 47, 84, 1841) also found elk herds abundant along the river on his trip to Fort Union and westward and on his return trip to Fort Clark, where he wintered. On September 23 and October 31 he records the loud bugling (flöten) of the bulls from the timber along the river bottoms, and the spirited drawings by his artist, Karl Bodmer, show the elk herds in their prime. Maximilian said that the elk might be shot during the winter about 18 miles from Fort Clark, but that they did not approach nearer because of the Indians. Their skins were of great value in the manufacture of Indian moccasins.
      Audubon (1897, p. 20, 157) (Audubon and Bachman, 1851, vol. 2, p. 88) found elk as abundant along the Missouri River in 1843 as had his predecessors. On June 9 he says, "We saw three elk swimming across it [the Little Missouri] and the number of this fine species of deer that are about us now is almost inconceivable." Many were killed during his stay in the country about Fort Union and on his return trip down the river they were seen and killed along the shores, while on August 26 the bulls were heard bugling, or "whistling," as he calls it. He says they were not confined to the wooded water courses, but roamed over the prairies in large herds.
      L. C. Ives, of Veblen, S. Dak., told the writer of seeing thousands of elk along the Lower Yellowstone River in 1864 while on an expedition against the Indians. At Devils Lake, Frank Palmer reported that in the sixties, when he first came there, elk were common all over the State, and especially along the timbered areas of the Sheyenne River, and around Devils Lake, where they remained common up to 1879 and 1880. But as the country filled up with settlers, they rapidly disappeared.
      In 1887, on the writer's first visit to North Dakota, he was told by an old hunter at Larimore of two elk killed near there in 1881 or 1882, and at Devils Lake there were said to be still a few. The last elk of which a record was obtainable in the Turtle Mountains was killed that year and a few were still found in the timbered areas along the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers.
      In the early eighties Colonel Roosevelt (1900c, p. 188; 1900b, pp. 155-156) says: "I have occasionally killed elk in the neighborhood of my ranch on the Little Missouri. They were very plentiful along this river until 1881, but the last of the big bands were slaughtered or scattered about that time." Later he says: "They have now vanished completely, except that one or two may still lurk in some of the most remote and broken places where there are deep, wooded ravines. Formerly the elk were plentiful all over the plains, coming down into them in great bands during the fall months and traversing their entire extent. . . . In the old days running [p.35] elk on horseback was a highly esteemed form of plains sport." He (Roosevelt, 1900c, p. 184) says: "Sometimes, but rarely, fighting wapiti get their antlers interlocked and perish miserably; my own ranch, the Elkhorn, was named from finding on the spot where the ranch house now stands two splendid pairs of elk antlers thus interlocked."
      In 1915, Remington Kellogg was told of six elk killed in 1883 near Elkton in Cavalier County. At Towner he was told by Mr. Lymburner that in 1884 elk horns were very plentiful in that section and that as late as the nineties the Sioux Indians had elk meat for sale that had been procured somewhere farther west. Near Plaza, in Mountrail County, he was told that a Mr. Hart had killed an elk in the summer of 1918, but no one could tell where it had come from. At Goodall, in McKenzie County, and near Elbowoods, in McLean County, in 1915, Kellogg found a few old antlers, as he did also on the river flats west of Sather, in Burleigh County.
      On the flats east of Fort Clark in 1909, the writer found fairly well preserved pieces of old antlers, and in 1916 a few very old fragments near the mouth of Cannonball River, although the last elk there were said to have been killed 36 years before. At Stump Lake, in 1912, the writer also found a few fragments of old antlers, but could get no record of elk living there since 1881. The same year at the Sweetwater Lakes and in the Turtle Mountains he found a few old pieces, and in 1909, photographed a fairly well preserved pair of antlers at Mr. O'Neil's farm near Metigoshe Lake in the western part of the Turtle Mountains.
      To what extent the elk were migratory in this open country will never be fully known, but their great abundance along the river valleys in fall, winter, and spring would indicate that these valleys were their wintering grounds. With a dense cover of timber and undergrowth and an endless supply of choice browse, they certainly afforded ideal conditions for elk winter range, just as the high windswept prairies gave equally ideal summer conditions. The shed horns of the elk are found mainly along the valleys or in the timbered areas around the lakes. According to Lewis and Clark (1893, p. 170), Big Beaver Creek in Emmons County was called by the Indians, "Warreconne," meaning where the elk shed their horns; Maximilian (Wied., 1839-1841, Bd. 1, p. 477, 1839) also speaks of the great numbers of shed horns along the, river valley, and in his account of the region figures a pyramid of horns that had been piled up by passing bands of Indians as a landmark. As the horns are shed mainly during March and April, they are usually left on the winter grounds, but a few are carried back to the summer ranges and widely scattered.
      Next to the buffalo, the elk at the height of their abundance were the easiest to hunt and hence the most rapidly killed of the large game, but when much hunted they become very wild, and it is probable that besides the vast numbers killed in the State, many were driven out of its borders.
      With the possible exception of mountain sheep, elk meat is the most delicious of all our large game and a half year or year's supply of jerked elk meat has carried many an early pioneer's family safely over the period of "hard times" coincident with the settlement [p.36] of wild land. In the open country the disappearance of elk before settlement was inevitable and in their going the advancement of civilization has been well served. Only the needless waste caused by skin and tooth hunters need be regretted. Among the Indians elk skins provided most of the moccasins, but were little used for other clothing. Later, together with the buffalo skins, they found a ready market and, like many of the noblest of our game animals, the elk were sacrificed by the white skin-hunters.
      Elk teeth were prized by the Indian women, to whom their use as ornaments was restricted. The wealth and rank of the women were often indicated by the number of elk teeth worn in necklaces and attached to various parts of their clothing. Even in recent times some of these treasured teeth have been worn by the older women and were so coveted that price of a dollar each was put upon them. More recently, however, white men have adopted elk teeth as emblems or ornaments and, outbidding the squaws of savage tribes in their price for a useless bauble, have caused the wanton destruction of thousands of these superb animals. The braves and chiefs of these savage tribes, adopting the claws of the grizzly bear, scorned elk teeth as feminine adornments.
      Economic considerations.--In domestication elk have proved more hardy and prolific than other stock and almost as easily handled under well-fenced range. If in the future the production of elk meat proves as profitable an industry as it promises, there will be found ideal conditions for elk pastures in many parts of western North Dakota, where rough and steep slopes lie close to brushy bottomlands, and winter browse and summer grass can be inclosed in single or adjoining areas. The severe winter weather which means suffering and loss to domestic stock without shelter is a joy to these native born and bred deer if a suitable and adequate food supply be available. Along many of the stream valleys with Badlands borders, which now lie idle or are of little use for stock, elk would find an abundance of their favorite food and choice living conditions. The time seems ripe for adding this industry to the many resources of the State.

Odocoileus virginianus Macrouris4 (Rafinesque)
Plains White-tailed Deer

(Pl. 9, fig. 2)

Tachtsha of the Dakotas (Gilmore); Tsita-taki of the Hidatsas (Matthews); Mahmanaku of the Mandans (Maximilian); Ta-paht of the Arikaras (Gilmore).

Corvus [sic] macrourus Rafinesque, Amer. Mo. Mag., vol. 1, p. 436, 1817.
      Type locality.--Plains of the Kansas River.
      General characters.--Similar to the eastern Virginia deer but slightly larger and paler in coloration. Horns with a single beam and upright prongs; [p.37] ears, small; tail, long, bushy, pure white below and gray on upper surface; no light rump patch. Metatarsal glands, small and low down on the hind legs. General color in summer, light-yellowish or reddish-brown; in winter, light gray with dark markings on face and ears; throat and underparts, always white. Fawns, spotted with white.
      Distribution and habitat.--Unlike the mule deer in habits, the white-tails are secretive and depend largely upon cover for protection. While originally well distributed over North Dakota, they have always been locally restricted to the timber and brush areas along the stream valleys, about the lakes, or in the rough and hilly parts where the gulches are well filled with timber and a tangle of undergrowth.
      Little mention was made of the deer of this region by the early explorers, as most of their attention was taken up by the other more abundant and conspicuous forms of game. Alexander Henry rarely mentions them in the Red River country, and their principal use seems to have been to provide skins for clothing. Along the Missouri River bottoms, however, they were so numerous in the timber and lake regions that their numbers were often commented upon by Lewis and Clark (1893, p. 174, 233, 237) on their expedition up the river in 1804-5. On October 20, 1804, on the great flats just below the present site of Bismarck, great numbers of deer were reported. At Fort Mandan and old Fort Clark, these deer furnished an important part of the winter's food supply of the expedition as it wintered among the Indians. On one trip a hunting party brought in 40 deer, 16 elk, and 3 buffalo. On another trip a few miles down the river, February 21, 1805, Lewis returned with 3,000 pounds of meat, having killed 36 deer, 14 elk, and a wolf. Many deer were mentioned at other localities along the river on the way to Fort Union (Buford).
      In 1833 while wintering among the Mandan Indians, Maximilian (Wied, 1839-1841, Bd. 2, p. 84, 1841) reported the white-tail as found in the nearest woods not a mile from the fort, while all other game was kept at a much greater distance by the Indians, who were constantly hunting for meat.
      The disappearance of these deer from the greater part of North Dakota was coincident with the settlement of the country. While they were quickly destroyed, however, or driven from the small areas of cover, the more extensive areas are still preserving them in some decree of abundance locally. At Fort Sisseton, just below the southeastern corner of the State, Doctor McChesney (1878, p. 203), reported them as very common 10 years before, but said that none had been seen in that vicinity for several years. At Valley City Morris J. Kernall was told by several of the early settlers that white-tailed deer as well as mule deer were common there from 1878 up to 1885 or 1886, and one was reported by Frank White as killed in 1893. At Ellendale, in the possession if Fred S. Graham, Sheldon found a mounted head of a deer killed in the hills 12 miles northwest of Forbes in 1886.
      In 1887, on the writer's first trip to the North Dakota region, he found no trace of white-tails in the Red River Valley, which was then well occupied by settlers, but they were still abundant along the Missouri River bottoms and were reported in the Pembina Hills and [p.38] Turtle Mountains. At Devils Lake, Frank Palmer reported that white-tailed deer were more numerous about there than the mule deer from 1868 to the early eighties. At Stump Lake they were said to have been common in the early days, and in 1912 Mr. Hovey said that four or five had wintered in a little grove on his place near Tolna, a few years before. In Benson County, Remington Kellogg learned of two that were killed at Bald Creek in 1912, but none had been known in that region for so long that these were supposed to have been driven from Minnesota by forest fires. In 1912, the writer was told that there were still a few deer in the Turtle Mountains, probably an overflow, however, from the well-stocked game preserve just across the line in Manitoba. The same year Eastgate reported two that had been killed on the North Dakota side not far from the borders of this preserve. He said that the ground under the ash trees in this preserve, from which the deer had been eating the seeds, looked like a goat pasture.
      At Fargo, in the grounds of the agricultural college, in June, 1912, there was kept an interesting group of eight beautiful does, all raised from one pair of deer brought from the northwestern part of the State. They were captured when fawns on the Missouri River flats, about 20 miles south of Williston. The buck from this herd had died the previous year and was preserved in the college museum, but another was obtained later and the breeding of this little herd has continued. The mounted buck was in the long winter gray coat, but the does were in the full yellowish-red summer coats. When the herd was seen again on August 27, 1914, there were three pairs of twin fawns in beautiful spotted coats. All were in the summer red coats and the horns of the fine young buck then with the herd were in the velvet. Altogether it would be hard to find a more beautiful group of animals.
      In 1913, careful inquiry was made for deer in the region about Crosby, in the northwestern corner of the State, but only two were heard of, seen during a heavy snowstorm at a farmhouse north of town 3 years before. At a livery stable, however, there was the mounted head of a buck which had been killed 6 or 8 miles north of there 10 years previously. At Williston, there were still a goodly number of white-tails in the densely timbered and brushy bottoms of the Missouri River, where, owing to several years of protection from hunting, they were apparently on the increase. Formerly hunters had been coming in in great numbers during the open season and by hiring men with dogs and horses to drive the deer out of the bottoms had killed them off to the verge of extinction; with such systematic hunting the last deer could easily have been destroyed in this their best and almost their last stronghold in the State.
      In the same year, Stanley G. Jewett found a few deer in the thickets along the river bottoms near Fort Clark, where fresh tracks were often seen. He found none in the immediate vicinity of Mandan, but some were still seen in the bottoms a few Miles above. At Medora, they were reported as rare, but along the Little Missouri River below that point they were fairly common in the brushy draws and in the side gulches. South of Medora, along the northern edge of the North Dakota National Forest they were fairly common in the thickets and draws of the Badlands [p.39] breaks. In the horse pasture of Forest Ranger Follice, there were a half dozen that kept in the dense thickets along the banks of the river and in the gulches. When the hunting season opens, Mr. Follice said, they quickly leave his pasture and scatter out over the country, but usually after it ends all return to their former haunts. If a little more of this brushy area had been included in the national forest, an ideal game preserve for the white-tail, as well as for the mule deer and antelope, could have been established.
      In 1915, Sheldon found white-tailed deer comparatively common on the brushy flats near the mouth of the Cannonball River and also on the flats of the Missouri bottoms. Tracks were abundant and a number of deer were seen from August 12 to September 9. The following year the writer found them there in considerable numbers, judging by their fresh tracks and trails among the thickets of the river bottoms. The law protecting them was then apparently well observed and they were comparatively tame and unsuspicious.
      In 1915, at Towner, Remington Kellogg was told of a large doe that was killed seven years before by Clyde Coss from a bunch of three does and a buck in the forest along the Mouse River. At Grinnell, in the southeastern corner of Williams County, he was told that one buck was still left in the forest along the Missouri River. In a boat trip down the Missouri from Williston to Bismarck, during September, 1915, he found the deer more or less common all along the river bottoms. At Goodall he reported a few in a patch of woods on a point of the river, where they were slowly increasing since the law protecting them had gone into effect. Above Shell Village a few tracks were seen, and above Elbowoods there were thought to be a dozen deer in the vicinity. At Big Bend, he was told that 125 deer had been seen and counted in the spring when the ice was breaking up. At Stanton a buck and doe and fawn were often seen from the settlement in the evening. From Stanton to Washburn and down the river to Bismarck, deer tracks were seen near almost every patch of timber along the river.
      In September, 1919, O. J. Murie told of a deer recently killed near the Red River, 15 or 20 miles north of Fargo, and at Grafton H. V. Williams told of two that had been seen during the month about 5 miles north of town. At Walhalla it was reported that a few white-tails were still in the Pembina Hills near there, but that enough were killed each year by irresponsible residents to prevent any increase, even during the five-year period of protection accorded them by State laws. These hills, like the Turtle Mountains with their extensive area of timbered, brushy, rough, and sparsely settled country, afford a natural paradise for deer and could well support several thousand without detriment to anyone.
      Along the Missouri River, at Buford, Sanish, Mandan, and Cannon Ball in 1919, the deer were holding their own or were slightly on the increase and it was thought could rapidly multiply and restock the timbered bottoms if they could be adequately protected.
      Protection.--Reasonable protection would keep white-tailed deer fairly abundant along the Missouri and Little Missouri Rivers, as they are less averse to disturbance by people and domestic stock than any other deer. Theodore Roosevelt (1900a, p. 172), in writing of his ranch life along the Little Missouri in the early eighties, says [p.40] that when the cattle were first driven onto the northern plains the white-tailed deer were the least plentiful and the least sought after of all large game and that they had held their own as none of the others had begun to do. In certain localities they were more common than any other kind of game and in many places were more so than all other kinds put together. Ranchmen along the Powder River, for instance, had to content themselves with white-tailed venison, unless they made long trips back into the hills, and the same was becoming true along the Little Missouri. Skin and meat hunters found this deer the most difficult to hunt and the least remunerative to the hunter, and therefore only turned their attention to it when nothing else was left to hunt. In Roosevelt's long and interesting account of the habits and methods of hunting these deer he gives a good picture of their former abundance and rapid disappearance after other more easily obtained game had vanished, and he pays a well-merited tribute to the cunning and sagacity of the animals in protecting themselves, even where the country became well settled.
      General habits.--When not harassed the white-tails are active both day and night, feeding mainly during the evening and morning hours. When much disturbed, however, their activities are for the most part nocturnal, while during the daylight hours they keep closely hidden in the dense cover of brush and timber. Once convinced of man's friendly intentions, as in some of the national parks, they become frankly confiding and will feed in the open for hours at a time, lying on the sunny slopes in cold weather and in the shade during the warm seasons, often in plain view of passers-by.
      Food.--The food of these deer rarely includes much grass, but is mainly leaves, buds, and seeds of a great variety of shrubs and trees. Where acorns are available in fall the deer hunt over the oak-covered ridges in search of these rich-meated nuts, and often paw away the snow to obtain them from the surface of the ground. A great variety of other seeds and nutlets are eaten, including the pods and beans of many leguminous plants. In early spring, the first blades of green grass form an attractive food for the deer, but in the hunting season the writer has never found a trace of grass in a deer's stomach. The little herd in the fenced enclosure on the campus of the North Dakota Agricultural College left the beautiful dense grass of this half-acre enclosure untouched, but not a weed of any kind could be found within it. Outside the dandelions and other weeds were numerous, and a handful of dandelion leaves pulled up and thrown to the deer would create a frantic rush, each deer endeavoring to get as much of the dainty morsel as possible. As they prefer weeds to grass, a limited number of deer in every cattle pasture would improve the grazing by keeping down weeds and other plants that are of no value for ordinary stock.
      Domestication.--Naturally quiet in disposition, these deer take readily to domestication. In favorable situations they can be raised with little trouble and much profit, either in the same enclosures with cattle and horses or in pastures by themselves, where the proper food is available. The usual number of fawns at a birth is two, and the increase is even more rapid than with sheep.5 In the [p.41] fall when in prime condition their venison is unexcelled, and in many States the game laws have been modified to allow its being placed on the market under proper regulation.

Odocoileus hemionus hemionus (Rafinesque)
Mule Deer6

(Pl. 8)

Tsitashipisa of the Hidatsas (Matthews); Sinte-sapana of the Dakotas (Gilmore); Shunte-psih of the Mandans (Will); Ta-katit of the Arikaras Gilmore).

Cervus hemionus Rafinesque, Amer. Mo. Mag., vol. 1, p. 436, 1817.
Cariacus virgultus Hallock,7 Forest and Stream, vol. 62, p. 404, 1899.
      Type locality.--Mouth of Big Sioux River, S. Dak.
      General characters.--in size considerably larger than the white-tail, with forked antlers in adult bucks, very large ears, small white tail with black tip, and conspicuous white rump patch. The long metatarsal gland high up on the outside of each hind leg is one of the strongest group characters, when compared with the small glands low down on the white-tail's legs.
      Distribution and habitat.--Although never in such conspicuous numbers as the elk and the antelope, the mule deer apparently occupied all of North Dakota before the country was settled by whites. They were largely animals of the open country, however, and ranged freely over the prairies, keeping as much as possible on the roughest and highest ground. The Badlands were their favorite haunts; here they were most abundant and here long-range rifles accomplished their most deadly destruction. Of the original thousands there is to-day scarcely a remnant left in the State.
      The early explorers paid little attention to deer and rarely mentioned them, as buffalo, elk, and antelope were generally more conspicuous and more easily drawn upon for the meat supply. Alexander Henry (1897, p. 274) states in his journal in March, 1806, that three "fallow" deer were seen and one killed by the Indians near Pembina, but says they were the first he had seen in that quarter.
      In 1802, LeRaye (1812, p. 180) saw these deer at the mouth of the Big Sioux River and wrote his description, which later furnished the foundation for Rafinesque's publication of the name hemionus. He also reported them as one of the principal game animals of the Big Heart River country, in what is now North Dakota. Lewis and Clark rarely mention them on their way up the Missouri in 1804-5, and Maximilian (Wied, 1839-1841, Bd. 2, p. 84, 1841) in 1833 gives only a few records along the river and distinctly says that they were not to be found within 20 or 30 miles of Fort Clark. Audubon in his journal of 1843 records only a few mule deer among the numerous white-tails seen and was unable to procure [p.42] a good buck for a specimen and for drawing, so figures in his Quadrupeds of North America only a doe, taken near Fort Union.
      Lieutenant Hayden (1875, p. 94) in 1856, collected specimens of mule deer at White Earth River and Fox Ridge, which are still in the United States National Museum, and reported them as more abundant than the white-tails on the Upper Missouri. In 1873, J. A. Allen (1875, p. 41) reported them as "more or less frequent along all the wooded streams" from Fort Rice westward.
      From his Little Missouri ranch experiences of the early eighties, Theodore Roosevelt (1900a, pp. 220-221), in his delightful chapter on the "black-tailed" deer, wrote:
      After the disappearance of the buffalo and the thinning out of the elk, the black-tail was, and in most places it still is, the game most sought after by the hunters; I have myself shot as many of them as of all other kinds of plains game put together. But for this very reason it is fast disappearing; and bids fair to be the next animal, after the buffalo and elk, to vanish from the places that formerly knew it.
      At Valley City, in 1913, Morris T. Kernall gathered the following notes from early settlers: J. S. Weiser reported mule deer so common in 1878 that one could not travel 5 miles without seeing them. John Hailand reported them common in 1878 and the last one shot in 1885 or 1886; he says:
      There was so much venison in camp during the first years that visitors' ponies were usually loaded down with it before they returned. There was no sale for venison nor for skins, they were so plentiful. Skins were used for mattresses; they would get damp and deteriorate during summer and a new supply was provided each fall for the winter's sleeping.
      In 1887, at Fort Sisseton, just below the southeastern corner of the State, the writer was told that the mule deer had been killed off three or four years before. At Pembina, in the extreme northeast, three mule deer had been killed that year a few miles to the east in the corner of Minnesota, and there were said to be still a few in the Pembina Hills, 34 miles west of Pembina, and still farther west in the Turtle Mountains, and along the Mouse River. A few also were reported in the hills back of Fort Buford.
      At Devils Lake in 1916, Frank Palmer, who came there in 1868, told the writer that there were a good many mule deer until the country settled up in the early eighties. At Cannon Ball the old residents and Indians reported them as once common, but said they had disappeared a long time ago.
      In 1896 Ernest Thompson Seton (1909, vol. 1, p. 118), in company with Howard Eaton, on a 15-mile ride across the Badlands of the Little Missouri saw only three "black-tail" where ten years before his companion had counted 160 over the same ground. In 1897 or 1898 Elmer T. Judd killed a mule deer in the hills south of Cando, and he still has the mounted head. In 1913 Mr. Allen reported that none had been killed in the vicinity of Mandan for 15 years, but that some heads had been sent him for mounting from Medina 8 or 10 years before.
      In 1912, Eastgate reported mule deer as rare in the Turtle Mountains, but he obtained the skull of a young buck for the Biological Survey collection. He said that just across the line in Manitoba they were more common and a number were killed each year. In 1913, Stanley G. Jewett reported them as still fairly common in the Badlands [p.43] along the Little Missouri, below Medora, especially along Blacktail, Beaver, and Magpie Creeks. He saw mounted heads at the ranches and talked with men who had killed the deer during the preceding winter when they were driven down from the hills by deep snow. In the Killdeer Mountains, however, he found that all had been killed off near the settlements, one man at Oakdale having killed seven in 1911 but none since that time. At Sentinel Butte he saw the mounted heads of several killed near there in 1901, 1910, and 1911, and was told by Lewis F. Crawford that they were then found only in the rougher parts of the Badlands and were becoming very scarce where they were formerly abundant. Later in the same season the writer learned that there were a few mule deer on the Dakota National Forest, south of Medora, and H. H. Sheldon in 1915 reported a few still found there. The same year Remington Kellogg learned of two near the mouth of the Little Missouri, and in 1919 a few were reported west of Sanish. L. F. LePage exhibited a mounted head of about a 4-year-old buck, taken by an Indian in the Pembina Hills about 7 miles west of Walhalla in 1916. It was the largest of a bunch of four mule deer but had not reached its full growth.
      At the present time there may be a few mule deer in the most remote corners of the Badlands and an occasional wanderer from the Canadian side of the Turtle Mountains and Pembina Hills but, if not already extinct, this finest of all native species of the smaller deer will soon have vanished from the State. Its disappearance, while greatly to be regretted, is as inevitable as that of the elk and the buffalo. A few in public parks or on private game farms are all we can hope to save in open country, but in the steep and rugged mountain areas farther west, where the game and recreational value of extensive tracts is greater than its agricultural value, a strong effort is being made to preserve mule deer as a permanent part of the wild life of the country.

      2 For full and interesting accounts of the buffalo, see Allen, J. A. (1876), The American bisons, living and extinct; Hornaday, W. T. (1889), The extermination of the American bison; Seton, Ernest Thompson (1909), vol. 1, pp. 247-303, Life-histories of northern animals.
      3 Report by John Hailand to Morris J. Kernall in 1918.
      4 In the Red River Valley, the Pembina Hills, and the Turtle Mountains, it is quite probable that the large northern deer of northern Minnesota, generally referred to Odocoileus virginianus borealis Miller, will be found to enter North Dakota, but until the group is more fully worked up the writer is referring all the white-tailed deer of the State to the Plains form, macrourus.
      5 For information on raising deer and elk, see U. S. Dept. Agr. Farmers' Bul. 330 (Lantz, 1908).
      6 The name "mule deer" was given to this species by LeRaye in 1802, 15 years before Rafinesque clumsily converted it into the Latin combination hemionus, and this earlier name should be used instead of "black-tail," which Lewis and Clark in 1805 occasionally applied to it, but later fixed to the "Columbia black-tail."
      7 There are no specimens from the type region of hemionus for comparison, but on principles of geographic variation it is assumed that virgultus from northwestern Minnesota is not sufficiently different for separation. Until the group can be more thoroughly studied, it seems best to refer all the mule deer of North Dakota to hemionus.

Title Pages & Contents     Introduction     Part I.     Part II. Introduction     Part II. Artiodactyla     Part II. Rodentia     Part II. Lagomorpha     Part II. Carnivora     Part II. Insectivora     Part II. Chiroptera     Bibliography     Index    

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