Speaking of buffalo...
In the early 1800's there were estimates of millions of buffalo in North America.
By the 1870's they were almost gone. Our prairies looked like bone yards until settlers painstakingly picked up and hauled all the bones to the railway sidings for shipment by train east to be made into fertilizer. If those bone pickers hadn't have de-boned our prairie it might have looked a bit different. The pics only show one of many bone piles by the railway tracks. The 1885 bone pile pic was taken near or in Saskatchewan. I noticed it had elk antlers sticking up too.
The prairies during the great buffalo extermination smelled of death was full of all the carrion eaters by the thousands...because the hide hunters only took the hides from the buffalo. Would have been quite the dreadful scene rather than the beautiful countryside we enjoy today. Carcasses and wolves and coyotes and ravens by the thousands.
__________________
___________________________________________
This country was started by voyagers whose young lives were swept away by the currents of the rivers for ten cents a day... just for the vanity of the European's beaver hats. ~ Red Bullets
___________________________________________
It is when you walk alone in nature that you discover your strengths and weaknesses. ~ Red Bullets
Last edited by Red Bullets; 08-21-2016 at 06:52 PM.
|