102 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
the State of Mississippi, also diagonally, from the southeast to the north- 
west.* De Soto learned nothing respecting the buffalo, save the report 
brought him by the soldiers whom he sent northward from Northern 
Georgia into the present State of Tennessee, till after he crossed the 
Mississippi. 
Du Pratz states (in a work published in 1758) that the Indians of Lower 
Louisiana leave that country in winter to hunt the buffalo, as this animal, 
he says, cannot come thither on account of the thickness of the forest.f 
Adair, who spent several years in this region prior to 1770, and who de- 
scribes with considerable minuteness all the low country bordering the Gulf 
Coast east of the Mississippi River,t makes no mention of the existence there 
of the buffalo, although he gives a general account of the game animals, and 
- speaks especially of the abundance of the deer, bears, and turkeys. Gal- 
latin § gives the Tennessee River as their southern limit, and I have found 
no positive reference to their occurrence south of that boundary. On an 
old map,|| published originally in 1718, and reproduced in facsimile in French’s 
“ Historical Collections of Louisiana” (Vol. II), the region between the 
Cumberland and Ohio’ Rivers is marked as follows: “ Desert de six vint heues 
detendue ou les Ilinois font la Chasse des beeufs.” They are well known to have 
been formerly abundant in the region about Nashville, and they probably 
extended southward nearly or quite to the Tennessee, as a stream called 
Buffalo River forms one of the tributaries of Duck River, itself one of the 
principal tributaries of the Tennessee from the eastward. 
* For authorities on the Route of De Soto, see Biedma’s Narrative, and that of the Gentleman of 
Elvas, in French’s Historical Collection of Louisiana, Vol. I, and in the Hakluyt Society’s publications 
(1851), with an Introdiction, Notes, and a Map by W. B. Rye; McCulloch’s Researches; Gallatin’s Sy- 
nopsis of the Indian Tribes (Archzxologia Americana, Vol. H); Pickett’s History of Alabama, ete.; Nut- 
tall’s Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory ; Meck’s Sketches of the History of Alabama (South- 
ron Monthly Magazine and Review, 1839); Monette’s History of.the Discovery and Settlement of the 
Valley of the Mississippi; Bancroft’s History U. 8.; Irving’s Conquest of Florida; Schooleraft’s His- 
tory, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part IM, pp. 87-50, pl. xliv; 
orc, cic. 
+ History of Louisiana, Engl. ed., pp. 254, 255. 
t History of the American Indians (London, 1775), pp. 223 - 375. 
§ “Colonies of the buffaloes had traversed the Mississippi, and were at one time abundant in the forest 
country between the lakes and the Tennessee River, south of which I do not believe they were ever seen.” 
— Trans. Am. Ethnological Soc., Vol. I, p. |. . 
|| Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississippi. Dressée sur un grand nombre de Memoires entrau 
tres ceux sur de M*. le Maire par Gurni4™™® Dr LISLE de Academie R® des Sciences. 
