By William Temple Hornaday with an introduction by Hanna Rose Shell and a foreword by John Mach Faragher
When William Temple Hornaday wrote this text for the Smithsonian Institution in 1889, the thirty million buffalo that had once roamed North America had been reduced to a few hundred. Alarmed by this decimation, Hornaday--a hunter, zoologist, writer, and the Smithsonian's chief taxidermist--set out for Montana to collect specimens for preservation at the Smithsonian. One of the main results of his trip was The Extermination of the American Bison, a timely recounting of the history and destruction of the buffalo, and a landmark work in early conservation advocacy.