a mm 
THE AMERICAN BISONS. 113 
remain a great number in the exterior parts of the settlement.” * Again he 
says, after describing the salt licks of Kentucky: “To these [the licks] the 
cattle repair, and reduce high hills rather to valleys than plains. The amaz- 
ing herds of Buffaloes which resort thither, by their size and number, fill the 
traveller with amazement and terror, especially when he beholds the pro- 
digious roads they have made from all quarters, as if leading to some popu- 
lous city; the vast space of land around these springs desolated as if by a 
ravaging enemy, and hills reduced to plains; for the land near these springs 
is chiefly hilly.” ¢ 
Cuming, in describing the salt licks along the Licking and Ohio Rivers, 
thus refers to the former abundance of the buffalo at these localities: “These 
licks were much frequented by buffaloes and deer, the former of which have 
been destroyed or terrified from the country. It is only fourteen or fifteen 
years since no other except buffalo or bear meat was used by the inhabitants 
b 
of this country.” He was informed by Captain Waller that “buffaloes, bears, 
and deer were so plenty in the country, even long after it began to be gen- 
erally settled, and ceased to be frequented as a hunting-ground by the 
Indians, that little or no bread was used, but that even the children were fed 
on game, the facility of gaining which prevented the progress of agriculture, 
until the poor innocent buffaloes were completely extirpated and other wild 
animals much thinned; and that the principal part of the cultivation of Ken- 
tucky had been within the last fifteen years. He said the buffaloes had been 
so numerous, going in herds of several hundreds together, that, about the 
salt licks and springs they frequented, they pressed down and destroyed the 
soil to a depth of three or four feet, as was conspicuous yet in the neighbor- 
hood of the Blue Lick, where all the old trees have their roots bare of soil to 
that depth.” ¢ 
Other references to the abundance of the buffalo in Kentucky, at the time 
this region was first visited by the white settlers, might be given, but those 
above cited seem sufficient for the present occasion. 
The buffalo seems also to have existed in considerable numbers in portions 
of Tennessee, particularly about the salt springs on the Cumberland River, 
_as shown by Putnam’s “History of Middle Tennessee.” § This author gives 
* Filson (John), Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky, 1784, pp. 27, 28. 
i Ubid, pp: 32, 33. 
t Cuming (John), Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country, etc., 1810, pp. 155, 156. 
§ Counties Davidson, Summer, Robertson, and Montgomery. 
