72 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
Europeans visited America is still a matter of uncertainty, yet reliable data 
are sufficiently abundant to establish the boundaries of its habitat at that 
time with tolerable exactness. These data exist in the form of incidental 
memoranda in the narratives of the earlier explorers, rather than in formal 
statements bearing directly upon the subject, and though often unsatisfacto- 
rily vague in respect to dates and localities, they enable us to trace approxi- 
mately the eastern and southern boundary of its habitat at a date as early at 
least as the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was beyond doubt 
almost exclusively an animal of the prairies and the woodless plains, ranging 
only to a limited extent into the forested districts east of the Mississippi 
River, and never occurring as a regular inhabitant of the denser woodlands. 
The opinion most prevalent in respect to its primitive range, as expressed by 
authors who: have given most attention to the subject, is, that it for a long 
time inhabited the whole of that part of North America east of the Rocky 
Mountains between the parallels of 30° and 60°; some, however, make the 
Alleghanies the eastern limit of its eastward extension. To the westward 
some have considered its habitat as embracing a considerable part of that 
portion of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains contained within the 
United States. The purpose of the present article is not only to determine, as 
definitely as can now be done, its former extreme limit of distribution, but to 
give also a detailed history of its extermination over the area from which it 
has disappeared. Although hundreds of volumes and distinct papers relat- 
ing to the early exploration and settlement of the country embraced within 
the former range of this animal have been consulted in the preparation of 
this paper, there probably still exist many important facts, incidentally re- 
corded in little-known documents and in works.in which such facts would 
hardly be expected to occur, which have been overlooked, and which will 
ultimately serve to indicate still more definitely the date of its extinction at 
particular localities, though little ae that will materially affect the gen- 
eral results herewith presented. 
Probable Extent of its Former Habitat.— The boundaries of the former habi- 
tat of the buffalo appear to have been about as follows: Beginning with the 
region east of the Mississippi River, its extension to the northward was limited 
by the Great Lakes, while the Alleghanies may be taken as its general eastern 
limit, its occurrence in the mountainous and more elevated parts of the Caro- 
linas being due rather to the occasional wandering of small bands through 
the mountains from the immense herds that formerly inhabited the valleys of 
