1038 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



This note is of special interest as marking the probable 

 north-easternmost extension of the Grizzly-bear. But its range 

 began to shrink with that of the Buffalo that it preyed on, or 

 both retreated before the mounted riflemen, who now began to 

 appear. 



In Brackenridge's time (1814):*' This Bear was "not 

 usually seen lower than the Mandan Village [near Bismarck, 

 N. Dak.]. In the vicinity of the Roche Jaune [Yellowstone] 

 and of the Little Missouri," they are said to be most numerous." 



In 1820, Richardson saw a Grizzly killed at Carlton 

 House,'" on the Saskatchewan, and intimates that the species 

 was well known to the Indians there, though not apparently 

 farther east. He gives its range as "the Rocky Mountains and 

 the plains lying to the eastward of them as far as Latitude 61°, 

 and perhaps still farther north,"" and as late as 1875 Colonel 

 Dodge reports the species numerous in the Black Hills. '- 



HOME- The range of the individual Grizzly varies greatly with 



local conditions. In a rugged mountainous region where food 

 abounds it will not go half a dozen miles from a central point. 

 In the days when it followed the Bufl^alo herds it probably 

 went ten times as far, for, unlike the Blackbear, it is at home on 

 the plains. But a typical Grizzly in ordinary mountain country 

 to-day will ramble over a home-region at least 25 miles across. 

 W. H. Wright, after exceptional experiences, says:'' "The 

 Grizzly will live his life in a restricted area. He will go but a 

 few miles in any direction if there is food at hand, but he will 

 seek the food he wants if it is 20 miles away. A Grizzly, how- 

 ever, nearly always selects a range where he will not have to 

 travel very far to feed." 



ABUN- 

 DANCE 



In ancient days it was common to see a dozen of these 

 monsters in a day's march. Old hunters say that they would 



'H. M. Brackenridge, Views of Louisiana, 1814, p. 55. 



' Probably not the present Little Missouri. 



"> F. B. A., 182Q, I, p. 25. " Ihii., p. 28. 



■'The Black Hills, 1876, p. 122. 



"World's Work, August, 1905, p. 6540. 



