TENNESSEE MAMMALS — KELLOGG 297 



through these forests." This report seems to indicate that elk were 

 exterminated on the Cumberland Plateau early in the nineteenth 

 century. 



Family BOVIDAE 

 BISON BISON PENNSYLVANICUS Shoemaker: Eastern Woodland Bison 



Bison once roamed in large numbers over some parts of Tennessee, 

 but so far as known not a single skull from a Tennessee locality can 

 be found now in any of the larger museums. All the early explorers 

 followed buffalo trails through the wilderness, and the Spanish and 

 French settlements relied to some extent on the buffalo for meat. 



J. A. Allen (1876, p. 102), after commenting on the former 

 abundance of bison in the region around Nashville, concluded that 

 they probably ranged southward to the Temiessee River, since a 

 stream called Buffalo River forms one of the larger tributaries of 

 Duck River. As will be shown hereinafter, bison formerly ranged 

 southward to below Memphis in the western part of the State and 

 at least to Monroe County in eastern Temiessee. 



James Needliam, who was sent by Abraham Wood (Williams, 

 1928, p. 28) on a trading expedition, in relating his experiences in 

 1673 at the Cherokee Indian town Chota [located on the south side 

 of the Little Tennessee River a short distance below Citico Creek, 

 Monroe County] remarked that "many homes like bulls homes lye 

 upon theire dunghills." There is at least one bit of evidence to show 

 that the buffalo may have ranged farther south than Monroe County. 

 The left mandible of an immature buffalo (U.S.N.M. no. 200148) 

 was found in 1914-15 by Clarence B. Moore (1915, p. 368) in an 

 aboriginal burial mound at Hampton Place on the Tennessee River 

 opposite Moccasin Bend, Hamilton County. There are other rec- 

 ords showing that buffaloes were found before 1700 much farther 

 south than the southern boundary of eastern Temiessee. Boyd 

 (1936, p. 203), quoting from old Spanish documents relating to the 

 expedition of Marcos Delgado from Apalachee to the Creek country 

 in 1686, has shown that this Spaniard saw buffaloes near Russ Creek 

 and northwest of Marianna, Jackson County, Fla., and near the 

 Little Choctawhatchee River, Houston County, in the southeastern 

 corner of Alabama. 



On March 30, 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker (Williams, 1928, p. 170) 

 caught two young buffaloes on Reedy Creek and then traveled down 

 this creek to Long Island, Holston River [Kingsport, Sullivan 

 County] . 



On the trip during December 1761 down the Holston River from 

 Kingsport, Sullivan County, to a large cave below the present site 

 of Three Springs Ford, Hamblen County, Lt. Henry Timberlake 



