The Audubon Reader (82 page)

It would give me great pleasure to hear from you on this subject when your leisure will permit, and I need hardly say how much obliged to you I shall be if you can give me your advice as well as influence in case anything can be done for me. As to salary, I should like either a fair compensation annually (or if I am to supervise the production of a work, for only a few years) a reasonable price for my labor, and I believe few men can be found more industrious and, may I say it, able, than myself …

William G. Bakewell to Victor Gifford Audubon

Louisville, Kentucky

30 January 1843

I have just returned from Henderson. It made me melancholy to think of the happy days I spent there & to see the old house ready to fall down & all the fences gone. The source of all your father’s troubles there (the mill) still stands & is used as a tobacco [store house] … Game is almost as scarce there as here and now the Long Pond (where your father & I have had so much enjoyment), instead of being full of geese, ducks, &c., &c., & surrounded by a grand & solitary forest of largest hickory, pecan & cypress trees & evergreen canebrakes, is in the midst of log cabins …

William G. Bakewell to John James Audubon

Louisville, Kentucky

25 February 1843

Dear Audubon

I have your kind letter of the 17th & nothing would afford me more pleasure than to accompany you to the Yellowstone, it would be an advantage to my health & as I can
come close to the center
at 100 yards with my big rifle, I could make myself useful & I fear
I’ll never have such a chance again, but unfortunately the state of my affairs is such that it would be like
running off
to leave them, to say nothing of the absolute necessity of making the best of
matters as they are
& trying to get some way of making a living. If John does not go with you he ought to be
shot with hot mush
, as he used to say. I hope at all events you will find some clever thoroughgoing fellows to go with you who know something about what they are undertaking & who are good hunters, able to bring in fresh meat & do not expect featherbeds to sleep on. Some might be found in the West. Those you find East are all
shotgunned
and mad woodsmen, so that if they are not too timid to venture, there will be
more bother finding them
than finding the game or specimens you are in pursuit of. I will be most happy to see you on your way out & as the Ohio is & will continue in fine order you may calculate on coming from Wheeling to this place in 2½ or 3 days & hence to St. Louis in 3 or 3½. Boats are going nearly every day & I may go as far as St. Louis with you …

William G. Bakewell to Victor Gifford Audubon

Louisville, Kentucky

24 March 1843

Dear Victor

Your father, after spending a day or two with us, attending parties at Mr. Hale’s and Mr. Fellow’s,
out dancing the whole of us & keeping all the ladies
in the range of his acquaintance, left yesterday on the steamboat
Gallant
for St. Louis with Mr. [Edward] Harris, [taxidermist John G.] Bell, [background artist Isaac] Sprague & [secretary Lewis] Squires & I hope will have a pleasant trip, although no doubt he will be detained by ice in the Mississippi, the weather having turned very cold. In fact no one ever saw the like at this time of the year. The ink is frozen & my hands are in nearly the same fix & the river at this place full of floating ice. I presume it cannot last much longer, we are sick & tired of winter & it is very likely we will be launched into summer very suddenly. I think it will be impossible for your father to leave St. Louis for two or three weeks … I was surprised to find your father going without rifles, as shotguns are comparatively good for nothing in
such a country, particularly for killing
large wild animals
. I sold him my large rifle for $30 & will venture to say if placed in the hands of anyone that knows how to handle it, it will kill
more animals
from the size of a wolf up than all their shotguns put together, besides the chance of killing something out of a flock 400 yards off …

Whether we consider this noble animal as an object of the chase or as an article of food for man, it is decidedly the most important of all our contemporary American quadrupeds; and as we can no longer see the gigantic mastodon passing over the broad savannas or laving his enormous sides in the deep rivers of our widespread land, we will consider the buffalo as a link (perhaps sooner to be forever lost than is generally supposed) which to a slight degree yet connects us with larger American animals belonging to extinct creations.

But ere we endeavor to place before you the living and breathing herds of buffaloes, you must journey with us in imagination to the vast western prairies, the secluded and almost inaccessible valleys of the Rocky Mountain chain and the arid and nearly impassable deserts of the western table lands of our country; and here we may be allowed to express our deep, though unavailing, regret that the world now contains only few and imperfect remains of the lost races of which we have our sole knowledge through the researches and profound deductions of geologists; and even though our knowledge of the osteology of the more recently exterminated species be sufficient to place them before our “mind’s eye,” we have no description and no figures of the once living and moving but now departed possessors of these woods, plains, mountains and waters in which, ages ago, they are supposed to have dwelt. Let us however hope that our humble efforts may at least enable us to perpetuate a knowledge of such species as the Giver of all good has allowed
to remain with us to the present day. And now we will endeavor to give a good account of the majestic bison.

In the days of our boyhood and youth, buffaloes roamed over the small and beautiful prairies of Indiana and Illinois and herds of them stalked through the open woods of
Kentucky and
Tennessee; but they had dwindled down to a few stragglers which resorted chiefly to the Barrens towards the years 1808 and 1809, and soon after entirely disappeared. Their range has since that period gradually tended westward, and now you must direct your steps “to the Indian country” and travel many hundred miles beyond the fair valleys of the Ohio towards the great rocky chain of mountains which forms the backbone of North America, before you can reach the buffalo and see him roving in his sturdy independence upon the vast elevated plains which extend to the base of the Rocky Mountains.

Hie with us then to the West! Let us quit the busy streets of St. Louis, once considered the outpost of civilization but now a flourishing city in the midst of a fertile and rapidly growing country with towns and villages scattered for hundreds of miles beyond it; let us leave the busy haunts of men, and on good horses take the course that will lead us into the buffalo region, and when we have arrived at the sterile and extended plains which we desire to reach we shall be recompensed for our toilsome and tedious journey: for there we may find thousands of these noble animals and be enabled to study their habits as they graze and ramble over the prairies or migrate from one range of country to another, crossing on their route watercourses or swimming rivers at places where they often plunge from the muddy bank into the stream to gain a sandbar or shoal midway in the river that affords them a resting place from which, after a little time, they can direct their course to the opposite shore when, having reached it, they must scramble up the bank ere they can gain the open prairie beyond.

There we may also witness severe combats between the valiant bulls in the rutting season, hear their angry bellowing and observe their sagacity as well as courage when disturbed by the approach of man.

The American bison is much addicted to wandering, and the various herds annually remove from the North at the approach of
winter, although many may be found during that season remaining in high latitudes, their thick, woolly coats enabling them to resist a low temperature without suffering greatly. During a severe winter, however, numbers of them perish, especially the old and the very young ones. The
breeding season is generally the months of June and July, and the
calves are brought forth in April and May, although occasionally they are produced as early as March or as late as July. The buffalo most frequently has but one calf at a time, but instances occur of their having two. The females usually retire from the herd either singly or several in company, select as solitary a spot as can be found, remote from the haunt of wolves, bears or other enemies that would be most likely to molest them and there produce their young.

Occasionally, however, they bring forth their offspring when the herd is migrating, and at such times they are left by the main body, which they rejoin as soon as possible. The young usually follow the mother until she is nearly ready to have a calf again. The buffalo seldom produces young until the third year but will continue breeding until very old. When a cow and her very young calf are attacked by wolves, the cow bellows and sometimes runs at the enemy and not unfrequently frightens him away; this, however, is more generally the case when several cows are together, as the
wolf, ever on the watch, is sometimes able to secure a calf when it is only protected by its mother.

The buffalo begins to shed its hair as early as February. This falling of the winter coat shows first between the forelegs and around the udder in the female on the inner surface of the thighs, &c. Next the entire pelage of long hairs drop gradually but irregularly, leaving almost naked patches in some places, whilst other portions are covered with loosely hanging wool and hair.

At this period these animals have an extremely ragged and miserable appearance. The last part of the shedding process takes place on the hump. During the time of shedding the bison searches for trees, bushes, &c. against which to rub himself and thereby facilitate the speedy falling off of his old hair. It is not until the end of September or later that he gains his new coat of hair. The skin of a buffalo killed in October, the hunters generally consider, makes a good buffalo robe; and who is there that has driven in an open
sleigh or wagon that will not be ready to admit this covering to be the cheapest and the best as a protection from the cold, rain, sleet and the drifting snows of winter? for it is not only a warm covering, but impervious to water.

The bison bulls generally select a mate from among a herd of cows and do not leave their chosen one until she is about to calve.

When two or more males fancy the same female, furious battles ensue and the conqueror leads off the fair cause of the contest in triumph. Should the cow be alone the defeated lovers follow the happy pair at such a respectful distance as will ensure to them a chance to make their escape if they should again become obnoxious to the victor, and at the same time enable them to take advantage of any accident that might happen in their favor. But should the fight have been caused by a female who is in a large herd of cows, the discomfited bull soon finds a substitute for his first passion. It frequently happens that a bull leads off a cow and remains with her separated during the season from all others, either male or female.

When the buffalo bull is working himself up to a belligerent state he paws the ground, bellows loudly and goes through nearly all the actions we may see performed by the domesticated bull under similar circumstances, and finally rushes at his foe head foremost with all his speed and strength. Notwithstanding the violent shock with which two bulls thus meet in mad career, these encounters have never been known to result fatally, probably owing to the strength of the spinous process commonly called the hump, the shortness of their horns and the quantity of hair about all their foreparts.

When congregated together in fair weather, calm or nearly so, the
bellowing of a large herd (which sometimes contains a thousand) may be heard at the extraordinary distance of ten miles at least.

During the
rutting season or while fighting (we are not sure which), the bulls scrape or paw up the grass in a circle sometimes ten feet in diameter, and these places being resorted to from time to time by other fighting bulls become larger and deeper and are easily recognized even after rains have filled them with water.

In winter, when the ice has become strong enough to bear the
weight of many tons, buffaloes are often drowned in great numbers, for they are in the habit of
crossing rivers on the ice, and should any alarm occur, rush in a dense crowd to one place; the ice gives way beneath the pressure of hundreds of these huge animals, they are precipitated into the water, and if it is deep enough to reach over their backs, soon perish. Should the water, however, be shallow, they scuffle through the broken and breaking ice in the greatest disorder to the shore.