As might be supposed, the Indians were encouraged to kill buffaloes for their robes, and this is what Mr. George Catlin wrote at the mouth of the Tetón River (Pyatt County, Dakota) in 1832 concerning this trade:[63]

“It seems hard and cruel (does it not?) that we civilized people, with all the luxuries and comforts of the world about us, should be drawing from the backs of these useful animals the skins for our luxury, leaving their carcasses to be devoured by the wolves; that we should draw from that country some one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand of their robes annually, the greater part of which are taken from animals that are killed expressly for the robe, at a season when the meat is not cured and preserved, and for each of which skins the Indian has received but a pint of whisky!  Such is the fact, and that number, or near it, are annually destroyed, in addition to the number that is necessarily killed for the subsistence of three hundred thousand Indians, who live chiefly upon them.”

The author further declared that the fur trade in those “great western realms” was then limited chiefly to the purchase of buffalo robes.

1. The Red River half-breeds.—­In June, 1840, when the Red River half-breeds assembled at Pembina for their annual expedition against the buffalo, they mustered as follows: 

+-------------------------------------+
|Carts                          |1,210|
+-------------------------+-----+-----+
|Hunters                  |  620|     |
+-------------------------+-----+     |
|Women                    |  650|1,630|
+-------------------------+-----+     |
|Boys and girls           |  360|     |
+-------------------------+-----+-----+
|Horses (buffalo runners)       |  403|
+-------------------------------+-----+
|Dogs                           |  542|
+-------------------------------+-----+
|Cart horses                    |  655|
+-------------------------------+-----+
|Draught oxen                   |  586|
+-------------------------------+-----+
|Skinning knives                |1,240|
+-------------------------------------+

The total value of the property employed in this expedition and the working time occupied by it (two months) amounted to the enormous sum of £24,000.

[Note 63:  North American Indians, I, p. 263.]

Although the bison formerly ranged to Fort Garry (near Winnipeg), they had been steadily killed off and driven back, and in 1840 none were found by the expedition until it was 250 miles from Pembina, which is situated on the Red River, at the international boundary.  At that time the extinction of the species from the Red River to the Cheyenne was practically complete.  The Red River settlers, aided, of course, by the Indians of that region, are responsible for the extermination of the bison throughout northeastern Dakota as far as the Cheyenne River, northern Minnesota, and the whole of what is now the province of Manitoba.  More than that; as the game grew scarce and retired farther and farther, the half-breeds, who despised agriculture as long as there was a buffalo to kill, extended their hunting operations westward along the Qu’Appelle until they encroached upon the hunting-grounds of the Plain Crees, who lived in the Saskatchewan country.