I stumbled on this map the other day that shows the areas and approximate dates for where the last buffalo herds were sighted in Texas. In terms of the great buffalo herds, Brown County and areas to its north and west truly were the last frontier in Texas, and one of the last of the ranges of these animals that once numbered, according to some estimates, from 30 to 70 million across the US. The map shows the last bison sighting in Brown County to be somewhere between 1870 and 1876. The deliberate hunting of buffalo for the purpose of extinction began around 1870, and the process did not take long considering how many animals there were.

Published in the Clinton County Times, Jan 21, 1927, is an account by old time buffalo hunter Frank Sherrod that tells how hunters staged buffalo hunts out of Brownwood in the 1870s, and describes the population numbers then. “I was just a boy and was out here on the buffalo range in 1874 and 1875,” Sherrod said. “I was seventeen years old when I came out the first time. We came out of Brown County, about 200 miles to the east, and there were only five of us….”We really came a lot further out than necessary to hunt the buffaloes…there were tens of thousands of buffalo everywhere.”

A publication by the State of Texas tells how professional buffalo hunters took up the task of extermination: “The vast herds were never in danger of extermination until professional hide hunters arrived on the plains. Their superior weaponry allowed over 100 bison to be killed at any one time. Thus began the “great slaughter,” and from 1874 to 1878, the great southern bison herd was practically eliminated. Estimates from the year 1888 verified that there were less than 1,000 head of bison left in North America after this near extermination.”

The last bison shot in Brown County is reported to have been killed by William Franklin Brown, but the exact date of the incident is not given. The record is found in James C White’s history of Brown County. It says, “The man who is credited with having slain the last buffalo killed on the open range in Brown County was William Franklin (Uncle Billy) Brown, an arrival of 1857, whose life span of almost 100 years carried him well into the modern era of history. He was born in Georgia April 9, 1820, and died here December 22, 1919.” It says the horns of this animal were placed in what was called the Boenike Collection, which was later donated to Howard Payne University. I don’t know, but I doubt the university still has those horns!

That 1889 map tells a wordless story of the bitter war that took place in Texas between the Anglo settlers and the native inhabitants. It shows how the bison extermination ran through Texas, as the herds were backed up and finally out of the state altogether. Many misunderstandings, false promises and crimes led to the US military’s strategy to exterminate the buffalo as a tool to control native populations. The decimation of a magnificent animal, if not for the efforts of Charles Goodnight and like-minded Texans who saw what was about to happen and began preserving herds of buffalo, could have led to the permanent extinction of this animal.

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Diane Adams is a local journalist whose columns appear Thursdays on BrownwoodNews.com