Bones

The Valley of Dry Bones, appearing to the ancient writer in his vision, fil led him with amazement because of its dimensions. In riding over Dundy County, during the eighties, one would be surprised at the spectacle. In any and every direction, from a given viewpoint, were skeletons of buffalo, antelope and cattle. Most of them were bleached from the action of the sun and winds. Thousands of frames of bygone animals had been strewn there for generations and suggested the thought of the prophets vision in its reality.

Native animals roamed the "plains," from time beyond knowledge, and there they lived and died. Books contain ac counts, of herds of buffalo seen from time to time during the "ox-team" period of crossing the American Desert and one illustration may suffice:—

In the latter sixties, so the story ran, a passenger train was detained for three days at a station on the railroad paralleling the Platte River in western Nebraska while a herd of buffalo crossed the tracks going to new graz ing fields. No attempt was made to pass through the herd as buffalo, on such occasions, disregarded the presence of the train and would rush onto the tracks, regardless of consequences. Imminent danger presented a warning, so they waited until the buffalo had passed beyond the danger line. That one herd was variously estimated to contain from ninety to one hundred twenty five thousand buffalo. Thou sands of such herds roamed those prairies, from the early dawn of good pastures, and may give some idea of the cause for the extraordinary deposit of bones.

Between eighteen hundred sixty and seventy, the ruthless slaughter and practical extermination of the buffalo took place. Thousands were shot and killed for their hides and the carcasses were left where they fell, to be devoured by the coyotes and wolves. When meat was needed by the hunters, the loins and the "hump" on the shoulders would be taken and the remainder was abandoned. This merciless slaughter, together with the normal death rate, depleted the great herds and contribut ed to the enormous supply of skeletons scattered over the "Plains."

Thousands of cattle roamed the prairies too. As they had less resisting force, by nature, against the storms and suffered more from the shortage of pasture during the dry seasons, than the sturdy buffalo, their death rate was much larger and they contributed more heavily to the presence of so many skeletons.

Dry bones had a commercial value. They were shipped to the sugar factories so the story ran, and were ground into powder and used in the purification of sugar. With the ap pearance of the permanent settlers on the range, a systematic campaign was inaugurated and the bones were collect ed and brought to market by the wag on loads and sold for so much per ton.

Shipping facilities, in those days, were handicapped. The new settlers demanded needed supplies and the cars for the shipment of bones were not al ways obtainable on requisition, so that class of merchandise had to give way for the more urgent transportation. As a result of this congestion, the brokers found it necessary to devise ways and means of storing their product at con venient points near the railroad. The tonnage accumulated, from time to time, between shipments, and a rick of bones fifty or sixty feet wide, at the bottom, by about twenty-five feet high and extending along the tracks for two or three hundred feet could be seen at Benkelman, near the depot, at differ ent times. That vast deposit of the centuries kept the settlers busy, be tween times, for two or three years, be fore the last shipment was made.