OCR Text |
Show THE WHITE BUFFALO. "Whitewashed Beast That Plainsman Canfield Killed. (Kansas City (Mo.), Journal.) The disappearance of the stuffed white buffalo from the Kansas State house, presumably taken by the daughter daugh-ter of the man . who left it there on exhibition for so many years, will recall re-call some queer experiences to old buffalo, buf-falo, hunters on the Western Kansas prairies. There was a tradition among the hunters that some one had hung up a reward of $1,000 for the skin of a white buffalo. There were white buffalo buf-falo albinos, such as are found at rare intervals in all the families of the animal ani-mal kingdom but the number of those which existed in. fact and of those which existed purely in the imagination imagina-tion was in wonderful disproportion. Every buffalo hunter could tell stories of having seen and pursued white buffalo. buf-falo. Many a hunter has been sent on a wild goose chase by false reports of this character. In .1873, for instance, old Ben Canfield, who roamed the plains with his tall, gaunt wife for a ' companion, followed a bunch of buffalo 1 from the northern edge of what is now Oklahoma to the sand, hills of Nebraska, Ne-braska, thinking to kill a big white bull. And after three weeks of patient stalking Canfield did kill the bull, only j to find that he was covered with a coat of whitewash which prave him the appearance of being white in fact. An explanation ' of this phenomenon would not Jbe needed by people familiar famil-iar with the natural , lime beds of western Kansas. The habit of the buffalo buf-falo is to roll in every pool of water or hole of mud Which he comes to. The well-known "buffalo wallow" still to be seen over the great plains, was the product of this habit. Canfield's buffalo had simply been roiling in a bed of the native lime, which coated his hide, when dried in the sun, with a kind of plaster. And no doubt these lime holes could account for many of the white buffalo so often reported by hunters. |