The Extermination of the American Bison | Page 8

the north they never go beyond the banks of the Rio Bravo, at least in
the States of Cohahuila and Texas. Toward the north, not being
checked by the currents of the Missouri, they progress even as far as
Michigan, and they are found in summer in the Territories and interior
States of the United States of North America. The route which these
animals follow in their migrations occupies a width of several miles,
and becomes so marked that, besides the verdure destroyed, one would
believe that the fields had been covered with manure.
"These migrations are not general, for certain bands do not seem to
follow the general mass of their kin, but remain stationary throughout
the whole year on the prairies covered with a rich vegetation on the
banks of the Rio de Guadelupe and the Rio Colorado of Texas, not far

from the shores of the Gulf, to the east of the colony of San Felipe,
precisely at the same spot where La Salle and his traveling companions
saw them two hundred years before. The Rev. Father Damian Mansanet
saw them also as in our days on the shores of Texas, in regions which
have since been covered with the habitations, hamlets, and villages of
the new colonists, and from whence they have disappeared since 1828."
[Illustration: HEAD OF BUFFALO BULL From specimen in the
National Museum Group. Reproduced from the Cosmopolitan
Magazine, by permission of the publishers.]
"From the observations made on this subject we may conclude that the
buffalo inhabited the temperate zone of the New World, and that they
inhabited it at all times. In the north they never advanced beyond the
48th or 58th degree of latitude, and in the south, although they may
have reached as low as 25°, they scarcely passed beyond the 27th or
28th degree (north latitude), at least in the inhabited and known
portions of the country."
NEW MEXICO.--In 1542 Coronado, while on his celebrated march,
met with vast herds of buffalo on the Upper Pecos River, since which
the presence of the species in the valley of the Pecos has been well
known. In describing the journey of Espejo down the Pecos River in
the year 1584, Davis says (Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, p. 260):
"They passed down a river they called Rio de las Vacas, or the River of
Oxen [the river Pecos, and the same Cow River that Vaca describes,
says Professor Allen], and was so named because of the great number
of buffaloes that fed upon its banks. They traveled down this river the
distance of 120 leagues, all the way passing through great herds of
buffaloes."
Professor Allen locates the western boundary of the buffalo in New
Mexico even as far west as the western side of Rio Grande del Norte.
UTAH.--It is well known that buffaloes, though in very small numbers,
once inhabited northeastern Utah, and that a few were killed by the
Mormon settlers prior to 1840 in the vicinity of Great Salt Lake. In the
museum at Salt Lake City I was shown a very ancient mounted head of

a buffalo bull which was said to have been killed in the Salt Lake
Valley. It is doubtful that such was really fact. There is no evidence that
the bison ever inhabited the southwestern half of Utah, and, considering
the general sterility of the Territory as a whole previous to its
development by irrigation, it is surprising that any buffalo in his senses
would ever set foot in it at all.
IDAHO.--The former range of the bison probably embraced the whole
of Idaho. Fremont states that in the spring of 1824 "the buffalo were
spread in immense numbers over the Green River and Bear River
Valleys, and through all the country lying between the Colorado, or
Green River of the Gulf of California, and Lewis' Fork of the Columbia
River, the meridian of Fort Hall then forming the western limit of their
range." [In J. K. Townsend's "Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky
Mountains," in 1834, he records the occurrence of herds near the
Mellade and Boise and Salmon Rivers, ten days' journey--200
miles--west of Fort Hall.] The buffalo then remained for many years in
that country, and frequently moved down the valley of the Columbia,
on both sides of the river, as far as the Fishing Falls. Below this point
they never descended in any numbers. About 1834 or 1835 they began
to diminish very rapidly, and continued to decrease until 1838 or 1840,
when, with the country we have just described, they entirely abandoned
all the waters of the Pacific north of Lewis's Fork of the Columbia
[now called Snake] River. At that time the Flathead Indians were in the
habit of finding their buffalo on the heads of