To cure the meat, pits about four feet deep were dug in the ground, and each lined with a green buffalo hide from a large bull. The pit was filled with the pickling solution, and the well-trimmed tongues and chunks of meat were put in it for several days, then taken out and smoked. The tongues were packed in barrels for shipment. Each piece of cured meat was sewn into a tight-fitting canvas wrapper. The cured meat found a ready sale in the eastern markets.
Good buffalo outfits were expensive, and wore out within three or four years from hauling the large loads over roadless country. All the wagons and camp gear were very high priced in 1871 and 1872, at the height of the rush, with newcomers bidding up the prices. A good large wagon, capable of hauling four tons of hides at a load, cost $600 or $700. It had steel wheels with nine-inch-wide steel rims and a flatbed of steel plate. Loaded, it needed six span of mules to haul it. The camp wagon was about half as large, also with nine-inch wheels. It had a steel box for hauling camp gear and supplies, and needed three span of mules. Wagons with wooden boxes and wooden wheels wore out too rapidly under the rough work in the very dry air.
The amount of ammunition carried by an outfit for one season is rather astonishing. One outfit with two hunters took a ton1,600 pounds of lead and 400 pounds of powder, enough for about 25,000 rounds. The brass cartridge cases were used over and over, being reloaded in camp each night after a hunt. A first-class hunter could get by with half as much ammunition. He figured on downing eighty to ninety buffalo for every 100 rounds fired.
Although almost every kind of gun was tried on the buffalo, the hide hunters needed very good rifles, both powerful and accurate. At least three-fourths of all the commercial hides taken were from buffalo downed by either the large-bore Sharps single-shot breechloader or the equally large Remington, also single-shot. Many of these fine guns were made to order, so they varied in bore, weight of ball, and powder charge, but they were about 50-caliber and shot a ball weighing about an ounce (437.5 grains), with some hunters using all the way from 320 grains to 550 grains. Such a gun was accurate to 800 yards, and with a good telescopic sight was deadly against even the toughest bulls at 300 yards. It weighed from twelve to eighteen pounds, with the sixteen-pound weight very common, and could be fancied up to suit the heavy spender with double triggers, 20 power scope, and beautiful chasing on the stock and barrel. The plain model sold on the frontier for about $125, but the extras could easily double the price.
In the spring of 1872, when the hunting camps lined the north bank of the Arkansas and the hunters, lying in wait, caught the herds as they came up from swimming the river, the constant booming of the big guns sounded more like a battle than a hunt.
At the height of the hunting, as hundreds of large wagons rolled in from the plains to the railroad loading points, and the long trains of boxcars, each crammed to the roof, rolled east to the tanneries, no one seemed interested in keeping a grand total of all the hides going from the several stations, although records were saved of the number shipped from any one station by the larger buyers. Each firm tallied its own shipments, and some of these accounts have survived, giving the basis for a reasonably sound estimate.
At Dodge City during the winter season of 187273, the peak season for hide shipments in all history, one firm reported handling 200,000 hides, 1,617 pounds of meat, and $2.5 million worth of bones. It has been estimated by totaling such reports, and including some allowance for the many small buyers not reporting, that 1,491,000 hides were shipped in 1872, 1,508,000 in 1873, and only 158,000 in 1874a grand total of 3,157,000 hides shipped to market in these three years. To arrive at the number of buffalo killed to furnish these hides, one should add an allowance for those killed but not skinned, mostly old bulls, and for the many skins spoiled in handling before they ever reached the buyers, perhaps 2 million in all. During these three years the various tribes of Plains Indians were credited with killing over 400,000 a year, for an added 1.2 million. Thus in western Kansas and south into Texas over 6.3 million buffalo were slain in three years, changing the face of the plains with dramatic suddenness, for all the big herds had been destroyed, leaving the vast pastures empty except for the rotting carcasses and whitened skeletons.
Abandoning the empty plains of Kansas, the buffalo hunters moved on south into Comanche territory, and into trouble. They had no intention of honoring the terms of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, which reserved all the lands south of the Arkansas for the exclusive use of the Indians. Although the Comanches promptly protested the invasion, federal officials and army officers alike deliberately overlooked the treaty violations, and the few Indian agents who attempted to keep the hunters and whisky peddlers out of Indian lands were threatened with violence, not only by the invaders, but by respected newspaper editors in Kansas towns. In Washington, President Grant agreed with a delegation of visiting chiefs that the treaty ought to be enforced, but he gave no orders to that effect.
The Comanches formed war parties to oppose the hunters, picking off a man here, another there, stealing horses, plundering camps, burning the grass. They staged full-scale attacks against some of the smaller camps and succeeded in wiping out several small groups, but the large camps resisted so bitterly and effectively that the Indians gave up on mass attacks. They found the buffalo hunters to be tough, capable, experienced men, armed with long-range guns, well supplied with ammunition, and difficult to catch off guard. Attacking them in force meant the Indians would lose warriors and horses, and still might not win.
The most famous fight of the period took place at Adobe Walls on the Canadian River, where Kit Carson had his troubles with the allied Indian force in 1864. Now in 1874, when the first invasion wave reached the Texas Panhandle, the Comanches gathered their allies and, about 700 strong, decided to wipe out the new trading post at Adobe Walls, deep in Indian country 150 miles from Dodge City and the nearest help.
This trading post was an interesting attempt to adapt to the new hunting conditions. At the end of the fall hunt in 1873, many outfits knew that they had to find new ranges if they wanted more buffalo, and the only herds left south of the Platte were those on Comanche lands in the Texas Panhandle. Not only would they have a much longer haul with their hides to the railroad, but they would also be in serious danger from the Indians.
A sharp hide buyer, A. C. Myers, offered a solution that appealed to many of the hunters. If they would all go south together, he would load their empty hide wagons with his trade goods and pay them to haul the outfit to a permanent camp that he planned to establish. Then he would take their hides there in trade for supplies at Dodge City prices. If they all traveled together, they would be strong enough to beat off Indian attacks.
The hunters hastened to sign up for this adventure, and in a short time a caravan was formed, with fifty men, thirty wagons, and a few saddle horses in addition to the draft animals. One of the wagons carried a full load of whisky to stock a saloon at the new camp, considered more necessary by the hunters than an eating place.
Among the crumbling adobe walls of Bent's old post they built a saloon with sod walls and a dirt-covered roof. A house with picket walls served as a store, another as a blacksmith shop. A strong picket corral was built to protect the stock at night. The post always contained a minimum of nine men; blacksmith, saloon keeper, storekeepers, and helpers. The other forty-one men formed the hunting outfits.
On June 26, 1874, after the killing had been going well for some time and the hides were stacking up at the little camps, it happened that nineteen hunters from several different outfits came to the post at one time, bringing in hides to trade for supplies. A wild party in the saloon kept them up until about midnight, but they were all bedded down when, about 3 A.M., the ridgepole of the saloon cracked with a loud report, awakening everyone. They rolled out and scurried around in the dark, scraping dirt off the roof, cutting and fitting props, and making temporary repairs. At dawn they had finished, and some of them crawled back into their bedrolls while the rest prepared to pack up and get an early start back to their camps.