36 SAUTHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



acteristic along the western ])ank of the Missouri. However, all this 

 eastern region has heen subjected to direct glacial action as well, though 

 the loess has covered the majority of the glacial deposits. In a few 

 places in the southern portion, however, large numbers of glacial 

 boulders are exposed on the surface. Elsewhere these are usually visi- 

 ble only where loess and till have been cut through or removed by 

 water action. Back from the Missouri River, Loess Plain conditions 

 prevail, but along the eastern border (corresponding to the Central 

 Lowland of the Fenneman classification) are the wooded bottom lands 

 and bluflr's of the Missouri River and the lower portions of its tribu- 

 taries. Here are broad-leaf forest and thicket communities, and the 

 rivers with their shifting sand bars, flood plain thickets of young 

 cottonwoods and willows, bottom lands with their tall cottonwoods, 

 cut-off ponds, marshes and swamps, and cool wooded ravines with 

 clear running streams, all form conspicuous habitats. The bluffs are 

 more open than the lower ground, but even the bluffs are sometimes 

 crowned with open woodlands of oak, ash, hickory, walnut, linden, and 

 other deciduous tree species. Certain eastern woodland animal and 

 l)ird species occur here, as, for example, the woodchuck, ruffed grouse, 

 broad-winged hawk, and other smaller forms. To judge from archeo- 

 logical findings, as well as from the records of early explorers, elk and 

 white-tail deer must formerly have been abundant. The soil is rich 

 and varied, and water and fuel are more abundant than in any other 

 part of the State. It is at present the most heavily populated portion 

 of Nebraska, and undoubtedly the combination thus offered of open 

 plains passing into wooded bluffs and bottom lands plus the heaviest 

 precipitation in the State would have appealed to horticulturally 

 minded Indian peoples as well. 



In considering the natural factors affecting the aboriginal occupa- 

 tion of Nebraska the fact that the entire State was in the very center 

 of the old buffalo range must be stressed. Speaking of the bison, Allen 

 (1876, pp. 175, 176) says: 



Over a large part of the former vast region tliey inhabited they were as 

 numerous, as they now are [1876] in Western Kansas or Northern Texas, and 

 ranged at different seasons over the whole. Particular portions of this area have 

 ever formed their favorite places of resort, where they were sure to be found at 

 almost any season of the year. There is, for instance, abundant historic evidence 

 that over the plains of Kansas [sic], especially near the forks of the Platte, 

 along the Republican, the Pawnee, the Canadian, and other tributaries of the r 

 Arkansas, they were as numerous when these parts were first visited by the 

 early explorers as they have been ever since, and that subsequent travellers have 

 always found them in immense numbers at all these points, the plains there 

 literally swarming with them. 



