In the old days, trappers and scouts had all worn buckskin. But in the last ten to fifteen years, with the advent of the railroads and the ready availability of cloth garments, most westerners, including the scouts Charley Reynolds and Bloody Knife, had abandoned buckskin, which was slow to dry when wet and didn’t breathe the way cotton and wool did. The advantages of the new clothing were so obvious that even the Lakota traditionalist Sitting Bull had taken to wearing a cotton shirt.
