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THE AMERICAN BISONS. 41g 
be found in a wild state east of the Mississippi, referring, doubtless, to the 
Mississippi below. latitude 41°. Brackenridge,* in 1814, says the buffalo 
may be said to have retired to the northward of the Illinois, and to the west- 
ward of the Mississippi, and other writers confirm this statement.t 
Schoolcraft, writing in 1821, says that “the only part of the country east 
of the [Mississippi] river where the buffalo now remains, is that included 
between the Falls of St. Anthony and Sandy Lake, a range of about six 
hundred miles.” Sibley says that “two individuals were killed in 1832 
by the Dacotahs or Sioux Indians, on the Trempe a lEau [Trempeleau] 
River, in Upper Wisconsin,” and adds, “They are believed to be the last 
specimens of the noble bison, which trod, or will ever again tread, the soil 
of the region lying east of the Mississippi River.” ¢ 
Most writers, in alluding to the extirpation of the buffalo throughout 
the region east of the Mississippi River, speak of it as having been “driven 
out” by the encroachment of settlements.§ While a few of the herds may 
have migrated westward, it seems more probable that it was exterminated 
rather than driven ou, as it appears to have existed in West Virginia and 
* Views of Louisiana, p. 56. 
t Ellsworth states, in his “Notes on the Wild Animals of Illinois,” published in 1831, that “the buffalo has 
entirely left us. Before the country was settled, our immense prairies afforded pasturage to large herds of 
this animal and the traces of them are still remaining in the ‘ buffalo paths’ which are to be seen in sev- 
eral parts of the State. These are well-beaten tracks, leading generally from the prairies in the interior 
of the State to the margins of the large rivers; showing the course of their migrations as they changed their 
pastures periodically, from the low marshy alluvion to the dry upland plains. In the heat of summer they 
would be driven from the latter by prairie flies; in the autumn they would be expelled from the former by 
the mosquitoes; in the spring, the grass of the plains would afford abundant pasturage, while the herds 
could enjoy the warmth of the sun, and snuff the breeze that sweeps so freely over them; in the winter 
the rich cane of the river banks, which is evergreen, would furnish food, while the low grounds thickly 
covered with brush and forest would afford protection from the bleak winds.” — ELusworts (H. L.), Jli- 
nois in 1837, p. 38.. (First published in the Illinois Magazine, July, 1831, and republished in Featherston- 
haugh’s Monthly American Journal of Geolory and Natural Science October, 1831, p. 180.) 
t Sibley CHI. H.) in Schooleraft’s History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, Part IV, p. 94. 
Major Long states that in 1822 its wanderings down the St. Peter’s River did not extend beyond Great 
Swan Lake (Camp Crescent). — Exped. to the Sources of the St. Peter’s River, ete., Vol. HU, p. 29. 
§ Even scientific writers speak of it as having “ oradually retired westward in advance of the migrating 
column of the white race of man.” — Lerpy, Mem. Ext. Sp. Amer. Ox, 1852. 
“At the time of the discovery by the Spaniards, an inhabitant even down to the shores of the Atlantic, 
it has been beaten back by the westward march of civilization, until, at the present day, it is only after 
passing the giant Missouri and the head-waters of the Mississippi that we find the American bison or buf- 
falo. Many causes have combined to drive them away from their old haunts: the wholesale and indis- 
criminate slaughter by the whites, the extension of settlements, the changes of the face of the country; but 
above all, the mysterious dread of the white man, which pervades animal life in general as a congenital 
Barrp, Pat. Of: Rep., Agricult., 1851-52, Part II, p. 124. 
instinct.” 
