on neem 
THE AMERICAN BISONS. 123 
their former existence in immense herds on the Jefferson Fork. In their 
enumeration of the animals of the Pacific slope these travellers make no 
allusion to the buffalo. They also state that the Indians on Clarke’s River 
crossed the mountains in spring to traffic for buffalo robes with the Indians 
of the eastern slope.* 
In 1820 Major Long also states: “They have not yet crossed the entire 
breadth of the mountains at the head of the Missouri, though they penetrate, 
in some parts, far within that range, to the most accessible fertile valleys, 
particularly the valley of Lewis’s River. It was there that Mr. Henry and 
his party of hunters wintered, and subsisted chiefly upon the flesh of these 
animals, which they saw in considerable herds, but the Indians affirmed that 
it was unusual for the bisons to visit that neighborhood.” This would seem 
to fix the date of their arrival at the head-waters of the Columbia between 
1805, when Lewis and Clarke visited them, and Mr. Henry’s visit, about 
1617. 
From Washington Irving’s entertaining narrative of Captain Bonneville’s 
tour across the continent f we learn that Captain Bonneville first met with 
the buffalo west of the Rocky Mountains on the head-waters of Bear River, 
in November, 1833.{ Passing thence northward, they found these animals 
in abundance on the plains of Portneuf, where the Bannack Indians were 
engaged in hunting them.§ But in his subsequent long winter march up 
the Snake River, no buffaloes appear to have been met with. Returning, 
however, to Bear River Valley, he again encountered large herds. The fol- 
lowing summer (July, 1834) they again found them in great numbers on the 
sources of the Blackfoot River,|| but in a subsequent long journey northwest- 
ward, from the Upper Snake River nearly to Fort Walla Walla and back, 
they met with none, and rejoiced to find them again “in immense herds” 
near their old camping-ground on an eastern tributary of the Snake River. 
Captain Bonneville’s party passed the winter of 1834-35 in camp on the 
upper part of Bear River, surrounded by immense herds of buffaloes, which 
came down to them from the north. “The people upon Snake River,” says — 
* Lewis and Clarke’s Expedition to the Sources of the Missouri, and down the Columbia to the Pacific 
Ocean, Vol. I, p. 469. 
+ The Rocky Mountains; or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West,—a Digest of the 
Journal of Captain B. L. E. Bonneville. 2 vols., 12mo, 1837. 
{ Ibid., Vol: | pp. 125, 129. 
§ Ibid., Vol. II, p. 33. 
|| Irving’s Rocky Mountains, Vol. II, p. 179. 
