60 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
tion, and the buffaloes, in passing constantly from the broad grassy divides to 
the streams, soon form well-worn trails, which, running at right angles to the 
general course of the streams, have a nearly north and south trend. These 
paths have been regarded as indicating a very general north and south 
annual migration of these animals. It is, indeed, a wide-spread belief among 
the hunters and plainsmen that the buffaloes formerly performed regularly 
very extended migrations, going south in autumn and north in spring. I 
have even been assured by former agents of the American Fur Company 
that, before the great overland emigration to California (about 1849 and 
later) divided the buffaloes into two bands, the buffaloes that were found in 
summer on the plains of the Saskatchewan and Red River of the North spent 
the winter in Texas, and wice versa. The early Jesuit explorers reported a 
similar annual migration among the buffaloes east of the Mississippi River, 
and scores of travellers have since repeated the same statement in respect to 
those of the Plains. That there are local migrations of an annual character 
seems in fact to be well substantiated, especially at the southward, where the 
buffaloes are reported to have formerly, in great measure, abandoned the 
plains of Texas in summer for those further north, revisiting them again in 
winter. Before their range was intersected by railroads, or by the great 
trans-continental emigrant route by way of the South Pass, the move- 
ments of the herds were, doubtless, much more regular than at present. 
North of the United States, as late as 1858, according to Hind,* they still 
performed very extended migrations, as this author reports the Red River. 
bands as leaving the plains of the Red River in spring, moving first west- 
ward to the Grand Coteau de Missouri, then northward and eastward to the 
Little Souris River, and thence southward again to the Red River plains. 
As already stated, a slight movement northward in summer and south- 
ward in winter is well attested as formerly occurring in Texas; the hunters 
report the same thing as having taken place on the plains of Kansas; fur- 
ther north the buffaloes still visit the valley of the Yellowstone in summer 
from their winter quarters to the southward; along the 49th parallel they 
also pass north in summer and south in winter; there is abundant evi- 
dence also of a similar north and south migration on the Saskatchewan plains. 
Yet it is very improbable that the buffaloes of the Saskatchewan plains ever 
wintered on the plains of Texas; and absolutely certain that for twenty-five 
years they have not passed as far south even as the valley of the Platte. 
* Canadian Exploring Expeditions, ete., Vol. II, p. 108. 
i 
