The Extermination of the American Bison | Page 4

the
coast.[4] "It was found all alone, tho' Buffaloes Seldom are." The meat
is spoken of as "a Rarity," not met at all on the expedition up. The
animal was found in thick woods, which were thus feelingly described:
"The woods were thick great Part of this Day's Journey, so that we
were forced to scuffle hard to advance 7 miles, being equal in fatigue to
double that distance of Clear and Open Ground." One of the creeks
which the party crossed was christened Buffalo Creek, and "so named

from the frequent tokens we discovered of that American Behemoth."
[Note 4: Westover Manuscript. Col. William Byrd. Vol. I, p. 178.]
In October, 1733, on another surveying expedition, Colonel Byrd's
party had the good fortune to kill another buffalo near Sugar-Tree
Creek, which incident is thus described:[5]
[Note 5: Vol. II, pp. 24, 25.]
"We pursued our journey thro' uneven and perplext woods, and in the
thickest of them had the Fortune to knock down a Young Buffalo 2
years old. Providence threw this vast animal in our way very
Seasonably, just as our provisions began to fail us. And it was the more
welcome, too, because it was change of dyet, which of all Varietys,
next to that of Bed-fellows, is the most agreeable. We had lived upon
Venison and Bear till our stomachs loath'd them almost as much as the
Hebrews of old did their Quails. Our Butchers were so unhandy at their
Business that we grew very lank before we cou'd get our Dinner. But
when it came, we found it equal in goodness to the best Beef. They
made it the longer because they kept Sucking the Water out of the Guts
in imitation of the Catauba Indians, upon the belief that it is a great
Cordial, and will even make them drunk, or at least very Gay."
A little later a solitary bull buffalo was found, but spared,[6] the
earliest instance of the kind on record, and which had few successors to
keep it company.
[Note 6: Ib., p. 28.]

II. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION.
The range of the American bison extended over about one-third of the
entire continent of North America. Starting almost at tide-water on the
Atlantic coast, it extended westward through a vast tract of dense forest,
across the Alleghany Mountain system to the prairies along the
Mississippi, and southward to the Delta of that great stream. Although

the great plains country of the West was the natural home of the species,
where it flourished most abundantly, it also wandered south across
Texas to the burning plains of northeastern Mexico, westward across
the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, and
northward across a vast treeless waste to the bleak and inhospitable
shores of the Great Slave Lake itself. It is more than probable that had
the bison remained unmolested by man and uninfluenced by him, he
would eventually have crossed the Sierra Nevadas and the Coast Range
and taken up his abode in the fertile valleys of the Pacific slope.
Had the bison remained for a few more centuries in undisturbed
possession of his range, and with liberty to roam at will over the North
American continent, it is almost certain that several distinctly
recognizable varieties would have been produced. The buffalo of the
hot regions in the extreme south would have become a short-haired
animal like the gaur of India and the African buffalo. The individuals
inhabiting the extreme north, in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake, for
example, would have developed still longer hair, and taken on more of
the dense hairyness of the musk ox. In the "wood" or "mountain
buffalo" we already have a distinct foreshadowing of the changes
which would have taken place in the individuals which made their
permanent residence upon rugged mountains.
It would be an easy matter to fill a volume with facts relating to the
geographical distribution of Bison americanus and the dates of its
occurrence and disappearance in the multitude of different localities
embraced within the immense area it once inhabited. The capricious
shiftings of certain sections of the great herds, whereby large areas
which for many years had been utterly unvisited by buffaloes suddenly
became overrun by them, could be followed up indefinitely, but to little
purpose. In order to avoid wearying the reader with a mass of dates and
references, the map accompanying this paper has been prepared to
show at a glance the approximate dates at which the bison finally
disappeared from the various sections of its habitat. In some cases the
date given is coincident with the death of the last buffalo known to
have been killed in a given State or Territory; in others, where records
are meager, the date given is the nearest approximation, based on

existing records. In