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Unloading buffalo bones at rail terminal, Dakota Territory, in 1885.
would buy the bleached bones to ship to some fertilizer plant
perhaps. A big load of the bones would bring two or three
dollars, perhaps more, so, if a man put in a day with his team
gathering up a load, and another day to take it to town – it
would be hard money, wouldn't it?"
Harlan said the bones were plentiful, "usually scattered
here and there, where the animal happened to fall, and
sometimes two or more skeletons were in one place. There
were many huge skulls with wide spreading short horns;
bulls horns thick and stubby; cows horns more slender. I
found lots of flint arrowheads nearby, or sticking in a bone
when the buffalo had been killed by an Indian. We found
some bones with a big lead bullet smashed into them. Some
of the bullets were as big as the end of a man's thumb, being
from large bore 'buffalo guns' sometimes used by hunters."
Harlan also remembered another artifact of the buffalo
valuable to settlers: the buffalo robe. A buffalo hide,
carefully tanned or softened and with the hair left on, "would
be in nearly every farmers rig for a warm wrap in riding.
Some carried a robe the year round as padding for the wagon
seat. We had one of those buffalo robes, the inside leather
soft and pliable, the outside long curly hair making it perfect
protection for winter weather. The robes were plentiful then
and comparatively inexpensive for millions of buffalo had
been slaughtered a few years previously intirely [sic] for
their hides." ■
Visit the Nebraska State Historical Society's website at
Nebraskahistory.org.
JUNE 2016 • NEBRASKAland 13
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