Home Forums Hunting & Shooting BPCR Indian wars/buffalo extermination period 45-70 bullets

Cole, I'm not sure where you got your information, but I don't think the 45-70 was one of the cartridges "that started it all". All my sources show the 50-70 and 44-77 were probably the most common cartridges used when the southern herd was being hunted.

Eviltwin

As a writer, I'm trying to get the guy to use the vernacular that would have been used at the time. No one would have referred to it as the .45-70. They would have called it the .45 Government or the Government 45. That's what I was trying to impart. Having read some memoirs from the buff hunters, they didn't refer to the cartridges as they do today.

Dan

Cole you've got that cartridge part just exactly bassakwards. The "hunt" started with the 50-70 and 44-77, then upwards with the 50-90 and 44-90, and then came the 45 2.1 and the 40's, by the time they were done the 45 2 7/8 was the most popular of the buff runners. The standard cartridge of the Sharps rifle by 1877 was the 2.1 , except for the creedmoor guns and that was the 2.4, any other chambering was special order and cost extra.
Remingtons was stuck on the 44's.
The 45 2.1/45-70 was actually the brain child of the Peabody company and was submitted and passed military trials in 1865, so considering the "buffalo trains" ran on the Union Pacific beginning in 1869 it's entirely possible for the "45-70" to have been in on the frakus from the beginning along with god only knows what else they brought with them on the trains.

Source would be memory, which could be mistaken. The Allin Conversion and other 50-70's such as the Rolling Block, would have been the big guns available and used very early on in north Kansas and Nebraska with Sharps rifles in the same caliber quickly becoming available in .44 and .50 calibers by the time the Dodge City herd was being decimated in 1872 and the .45-70-405 arriving on the scene in 1873-74 to correspond with the end of the buffaloes south of the Ark River and down substantially into Indian Territory and even extreme north Texas. Were there not 45-70's at Adobe Walls in 1874? I cannot recall, but certainly afterwards they would have been available in the Sharps as well as the Springfields. The Big Fifty was THE cartridge by Adobe Walls and certainly for a time thereafter IIRC. Just arbitrarily, I would say the early days of the Hunt would have ended after Adobe Walls and the subsequent Red River War where the southern Plains tribes were eliminated as a cohesive fighting force. The development of the .45 into flatter shooting cartridges with more case capacity would surely have superceded the shorter 70 grain case by the latter years of the Hunt of which surely 1881 is one. I ain't looking it up in my Sharps book right now though so if my memory is wrong on all this I stand to be corrected. I did a quick looksee at Getting a Stand and could not find a list of calibers in there just skimming. I did pause and read an interesting tidbit about a blizzard though. It seemed surprisingly appropos today with it having been -14� when I got up and still having failed to reach zero today.

You have to keep the timelines of everything in perspective, by the time the Adobe Walls fight happened the Union Pacific had been running "buffalo trains" for 6 yrs. Ft.Laramie had been doing a brisk hide trade for 40 years, and Cheyenne had streetlights. Sam Hawkens rifle shop was located near the junction of Cherry Creek and the South Platte river in what is now known as Denver.
The 45-70 as the government adapted it happened in 1873. Wingate wrote in his book in 1875 about the Armies attempt at putting 90 grs of powder into that same case to use in longrange competition.He also wrote in that same book of the "explosive" affect of the 50 caliber on game such as buffalo.
Billy Dixon actually owned a 44-90 during the Adobe Walls fight, and a reasonable case can be made that the "shot" may of actually been with that 44-90.
The only 45 caliber cartridge listed by the archealogical report from Adobe walls are the 45government, and 45 vanchoate and 45 colt. None of the long sharps cartridges, and mostly 50's and 44's of varying type.

By gosh Ranch, you are the first person I have ever heard, besides myself and the author of whatever writing I read, who says that Dixon may have used a .44. Everybody just automatically says he used the "Big Fifty" (50-90), but I, like you, think there is a good chance he used a .44. What I have read though differs from you in that he supposedly borrowed the .44 as his own .50 had been lost in a river crossing where one of his wagons overturned.

Btw, the "borrowed rifle" part of your post is the only part I can find fault with. Salutations.

If you look close at Dixon's own account of the fight, he lost his 50 when the wagon tipped over in the creek on the way to Adobe walls. When he got there he bought a 44-90 and a case of ammo. During the fight he took a 50 from the bartender and put it to work. Now here's where I think things get confusing. He says he and someone else had left their ammunition at the trading post, so they made their way to get it. Now I don't think he would of left his 44 with no ammo at the saloon,and took someone else's 50 to get his 44 ammo, don't believe that to have been his character.
That's why I'm inclined to think he actually finished the fight like he started it with his 44-90. But that part most likely would of escaped who ever edited the books, and besides the big 50 has more glitz than a 44 2 5/8ths.

Thanks for the explanation. That sounds right. I agree totally with your last statement, especially.

Great thread guys.

For an interesting read about Buffalo Running, here's a first hand account..

http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/five/buffalo.htm

Bro Pine, Good read. Thanks

MUCHO better if you find the writings of Willis Skelton Glenn.

My father used to say that an historical novel was like a bustle in that it was a fictious tale (tail) based on a stern reality.

Great read thanks for posting.

I noted, a few years ago, at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, in Cody, Wy., that Bill's 'Lucretia Borgia', now behind glass, in a relic state, was fed with 50 caliber U.S. marked Government ammo, issued to Bill, by the Railroads, so he could supply meat to their track laying crews. Also, but off forum, is the fact that all of the early Sharps were paper cartridge weapons based on the old 1841 Slant Breech model. Remember Beecher's Bibles, anyone? And the Indians among others used 44 repeaters to bring down the beasts from horseback. IIRC, even some whites like Earp, preferred using shotguns from horseback. And to boot, W.B. 'Bat' Masterson was at the second battle of adobe walls. One scholarly account on the net seems to point to multiple brag shots by different customers,and of course, each marksman remembering his kill, as the longest successful shot in that skirmish. Interestingly, no one to date has reproduced the 1841 slant breech weapon, although they are the origin of the term, "ring tailed bullet". I believe Lyman still catalogs a couple of these molds. They only make sense with breech loading paper cartridges. The only repro muzzle loading Sharps made today are on the vertical breech block, model 185?'s. And if that doesn't muddy the waters, consider that the iconic Kansas Jay Hawkers is a corruption of J. Hawken, whose plains rifles were terrorizing the cattle drives as well as the buffalo herds. Bill's trapdoor rifle tripled the effective range against large critters, against PRB's, and it used a weather proof copper cased metalic cartridge, with the 450 gr. army bullet. Today, with the solid head brass, you need the new 50-95 Win. cases to cram 70 grains of FFG under the 450 grain slugs. So to duplicate Bill Cody, or the Wagon Box fight scene in Sheridan, you now need a 50 Win. Express, chambered in a 1 turn in 42" twist, single shot, side hammer rifle. Obviously, no paper cartridge, percussion Sharps rifle, ever left a trail of empty brass in the ground fabric, after a fight. So they have just disappeared into the mists. Go figure!
Thanx,in advance, Indybuster.

The fellas I shoot with regular that shoot the big 50 load anywhere from 105-120 grs of 1f under 6-700 gr bullets in starline 50-90 cases.
It's no big trick to drop in 75 grs of Goex cartridge in a starline 5070 case and seat a 470 gr bullet.

Indy, we were speaking of Hide Hunting which did not come about until they developed a market for them, back east. I ain't looking it up, but I believe Wright and Josiah Mooar were the ones who got the whole thing up and running. Ranch probably can tell you the exact year, but I know it was somewhere around 1870. Hide hunting wasn't profitable until this time and prior to that Buffalo Hunts consisted mostly of "show hunts" for European nobility such as Grand Duke Alexis or meat hunting for railroad crews.

It is debatable as to how much "Buffalo Bill" really did and how much was braggadocio. There were several "Buffalo Bill's" including William Mathewson whose exploits were very real. The meat hunters for the railroads who pre-dated the hide hunters indeed used different weapons and I am guessing that in the days right after the WBTS the 50-70 would have been the top dog, usually in the Allin Conversion.

My memory may be incorrect on this, but I thought the "Beecher's Bible" Sharps were model 1853 Slant Breech. I have never ever heard of the word "Jayhawk" being a corruption of the word "Hawken". While it is probable that some of the early Jayhawkers, circa 1855, probably used Hawkens, most of the original Jayhawkers had been absorbed into units of the Union Army by the time of the first real Cattle Drive, which occurred to the best of my recollection, during the WBTS and was to Sedalia, Missouri. Probably many of the same persons who had "Jayhawked" prior to the war and in its early days were those who enforced the Tick Fever prohibitions against Texas cattle during the post war years. There seemed to be a good business done in basically extorting the Texans near the end of their drives. This started around Baxter Springs, Kansas, for all intents and purposes, the second cowtown. As the railroad moved west, the gangs increasingly became more interested in actually protecting grazing from the voracious Longhorns and also keeping Tick Fever at bay more than some sort of theft-at least the way I understand it. At any rate, by the time period we are speaking of...1864 up through about 1867 or so, the Hawken would have been very obsolete. This normally wouldn't have mattered much, but with the prevalence of the most advanced small arms in-quantity, due to the end of the WBTS (in '65), I doubt the Hawken was much-used by them. By 1864 many Union Cavalry units were armed with the latest carbines, Spencers, Sharps, Starr's and even Henry's. In fact, the second-largest Cavalry action in the war occurred near here at Mine Creek, where these carbines played a pivotal role in saving Kansas and Missouri for the Union. General Sterling Price's Army of Missouri was nearly destroyed and carbines were not inconsequential in its destruction. These guns would have been surely, readily available to those whose enlistments had run out or who decided to disembark a little early.

My buddy was really impressed with all the knowledge shared by you fellars. He said to tell y'all that he had enough to get him through several westerns. He also told me not to get too close to some of you because y'all knew too much. He said, "hell, they know more about bufflers than I do about women and I've been married 3 times".

there-fixed it for ya;)

Later....

p.s. great posts from y'all!