TENNESSEE MAMMALS — KELLOGG 299 



known as Batons Station [Nashville]. An enormous number of 

 buffaloes were killed by these French hunters, but only the tallow 

 and the tongues were saved. These were taken down the Cumber- 

 land River in a keel boat (Ramsey, 1853, p. 192; Henderson, 1920, p. 

 128). For more than a decade Monbreun hunted in this general 

 district, and it is quite likely that his or some other party of French 

 hunters was responsible for the slaughter of buffaloes at Bledsoes 

 Lick in Sumner County, which Isaac Bledsoe related to an early 

 settler, William Hall. According to the latter (Henderson, 1920, 

 pp. 128-129), "one could walk for several hundred yards a round 

 the Lick and in the Lick on buffelows skuls, & bones, and the whole 

 flat round the Lick was bleached with buffelows bones, and they 

 found out the Cause of the Canes growing up so suddenly a few 

 miles around the Lick which was in consequence of so many buffe- 

 lows being killed." 



In February 1777, de Monbreun arrived at Deacons Pond [near 

 Palmyra, Montgomery County], where he met a party of six white 

 men and one woman who had traveled by boat down the Cumberland 

 River from a point near the mouth of Rockcastle River [Laurel 

 County, Ky.]. This party reported that they had seen immense 

 herds of buffaloes on this trip (Ramsey, 1853, p. 193). 



When the first settlers arrived at Nashville in 1780, bison were still 

 present in the surrounding country (Ramsey, 1853, p. 206). Col. 

 John Donelson's party killed buffaloes along the Cumberland River 

 near the Kentucky-Tennessee line on March 30, 1780 (Williams, 1928, 

 p. 241 ) . When Colonel Donelson settled in 1780 a few miles up from 

 the m.outh of Stones River [Davidson County], in a tract called 

 "Clover Bottom" and planted his corn, there were "immense herds of 

 buffalo, deer, etc., ranging through these forests" (Putnam, 1859, 

 p. 622). 



According to Ramsey (1853, p. 450) a party of 20 hunters from 

 Eatons Station [Nashville] traveled up the Cumberland River in 

 canoes to the region between Caney Fork and Flynns Lick Creek 

 [Smith, Putnam, and Jackson Counties], where they killed 75 buffa- 

 loes during the winter of 1782. 



When the road from Clinch River to Nashville by way of Crab 

 Orchard [Cumberland County] was opened in 1783, the top of the 

 mountain was described as a "vast upland prairie, covered with a 

 most luxuriant growth of native grasses, pastured over as far as the 

 eye could see, with numerous herds of deer, elk and buffalo" (Ram- 

 sey, 1853, p. 501). 



John Lipscomb wrote in his journal (Williams, 1928, p. 276) under 

 date of June 29, 1784, that having com.e to the lick near Little Barren 

 River [Macon County, Tenn., or Allen County, Ky.] , they "crept to 



