John Frederick Finerty, a correspondent for the Chicago Times as well as, later, a U.S. congressman from Illinois, participated in an 1876 buffalo hunt which he described:
All at once we ascended the crest of a grassy slope, and then a sight burst upon us calculated to thrill the coldest heart… As far as the eye could reach on both sides of our route, the somber, superb buffalo were grazing in thousands!… The Crow warriors on the west and the Shoshones on the east, throwing off all that might impede them… dashed off like mounted maniacs, and made for the gigantic herd of bisons. Then rang out the crack of the rifle, the whoop and the yell of triumph, as buffalo after buffalo wend down before the fire of those matchless horsemen and superb shots! (Finerty, 1890, p. 117)
The methods had changed in that the rifle was in more common use in 1876, but the victory was the same.
Miller simplified the composition for the Walters (CR #372A) and Brown (CR #372B) commissions. He removed the tree at the right.
Ron Tyler
