50 ANIMAL LIFE OF CARLSBAD CAVERN 



place, near where the Santa Fe railroad now crosses the 

 river at Ribera; and in 1584, Antonio de Espejo traveled 

 down the Pecos River Valley from this point one 

 hundred and twenty leagues, "all the way through 

 great heard of buffaloes." Other early writers spoke 

 of the abundance of buffaloes in this valley, which ap- 

 parently marked their westernmost limit in New 

 Mexico within the period of its written history. It 

 was the hunting and fighting ground of native tribes of 

 Indians from farther west, who came to get a supply of 

 buffalo meat, but made little impression upon the 

 great herds that grazed over the grassy valley and 

 watered at the great river or at the many smaller 

 streams and pools to the west. With the coming of 

 white men, the buffaloes were rapidly destroyed or 

 driven back, and the last of which we have record were 

 killed in the valley in 1884 and 1885. Up to 1900 their 

 old trails leading down from the plains and the deep cuts 

 worn into the Pecos River banks were still conspicuous 

 landmarks, but now these old trails have been so long 

 used by domestic stock as to have lost much of their 

 original character, and with them the last traces of the 

 buffalo have all but disappeared from the valley. 



A herd of domesticated buffaloes (numbering in 1923 

 about fifty-four) is kept on the McKenzie Ranch near 

 Fort Sumner, and in 1925 thirty-three buffaloes were 

 reported on the Bell Ranch, while several other pri- 

 vately owned herds are kept in western Texas. A 

 stray buffalo bull wandering up and down the Pecos 

 Valley near Carlsbad during the spring of 1924, was 

 driven into a corral, teased into a fighting fury and 



