THE AMERICAN BISONS. 121 
the Yampah, and the upper tributaries of Green River; but the scarcity of 
water seemed to have forced the greater part of them southward. Respect- 
ing their occurrence near Bridger’s Fork of the Muddy, Stansbury says: 
“ As long as the water lasted, the whole plain must have been covered with 
buffalo and antelope, as the profusion of ‘sign’ abundantly proved; but as 
this indispensable article was absorbed by the sandy soil, they seemed, from 
the direction of their trails, to have struck a course for the Vermilion.” * 
They have, however, long since disappeared from the head-waters of Green 
River, and, indeed, from all the country drained by the tributaries of ‘the 
Colorado. Although their bleached: skulls are still found throughout the 
valleys, I was informed by old hunters whom I saw there in the autumn of 
1871, that no buffaloes had been seen in this region for more than twenty 
years. 
The best account of their range in recent times, west of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and of their extermination over this vast region, is that given by Fré- 
mont, based on his own extensive travels and on the still more extended 
experience of Mr. Fitzpatrick. Frémont states that in the spring of 1824 
“the buffalo were spread in immense numbers over the Green River and 
Bear River Valleys, and through all the country lying between the Colorado, 
or Green River of the Gulf of California, and Lewis’s Fork of the Columbia 
River; the meridian of Fort Hall then forming the western limit of their 
range. The buffalo then remained for many years in that country, and fre- 
quently moved down the Valley of the Columbia, on both sides of the river, 
as far as the /ishing Falls. Below this point they never descended in any 
numbers.t About 1834 or 1835 they began to diminish very rapidly, and 
continued to decrease until 1838 or 1840, when, with the country we have 
just described, they entirely abandoned all the waters of the Pacific north 
of Lewis’s Fork of the Columbia. At that time the Flathead Indians were 
in the habit of finding their buffalo on the heads of Salmon River and other 
streams of the Columbia, but now [1848] they never meet with them farther 
west than the three forks of the Missouri or the plains of the Yellowstone 
River. 
“In the course of our journey it will be remarked that the buffalo have 
not so entirely abandoned the waters of the Pacific, in the Rocky Mountain 
* Stansbury’s Expedition to the Great Salt Lake, p. 238. 
+ The locality at which Professor Marsh found the crumbling bones of the buffalo is some two hundred 
and fifty miles further northwest, or lower down the river. See antea, p. 119. 
. 
