* 
THE AMERICAN BISONS. 125 
meat and furs. “This,’ he says, “has been a great hunting-season with all 
the Indians, both east and west of the mountains. Hundreds of thousands 
of buffalo have been slain, and small game — consisting of antelope, deer, 
beaver, etc. — has been innumerable.” * 
It thus appears that the buffalo formerly existed west of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, nearly to the northern boundary of the United States, and that they 
had become completely exterminated there as early, according to Frémont 
(as above cited), as 1840, although they swarmed there in immense herds as 
late as 1835. The valleys of the streams in that region are represented as 
abounding in fertile prairies, and as being generally covered with perennial 
grasses. As the adjoining country westward is barren and wholly unproduc- 
tive of grass, it is probable that the buffalo ranged further westward only 
irregularly, and in straggling bands. Bonneviile, at least, failed to meet 
with any between the sources of Snake River and Fort Walla-Walla in 1834 
and 1835, and no other explorer seems to have met with them living so far 
west. Dr. Hayden informs me that a few still exist in the valley of the Gros 
Ventres, and in the extreme upper part of the Snake River, — merely 
straggling old bulls, the last survivors of former populous herds. Professor 
O. C. Marsh writes me that the last one shot on Henry’s Fork was killed in 
1844. Professor J. Marcou informs me that a single old buffalo bull made 
his appearance at Fort Bridger last summer (1875), but that none had been 
seen there before, according to Dr. Carter, for thirty years. This solitary 
straggler was probably a wanderer from the remnants of his race still left in 
the valleys of the Wind River Mountains. 
Range westward south of the Thirty-ninth Parallel. — According to Lieutenant 
Whipple, “there do not seem to be any well-authenticated accounts of the 
existence of the buffalo west of the Rio Grande.” He adds: “On inquiring 
how far west the buffalo had been seen, a Tegua Indian stated that many 
years ago his father killed two at Santo Domingo. A Mexican from San 
Juan de Caballeros added that in 1835 he saw buffalo on the Rio del Norte.” 
Lieutenant Whipple further says that “Father Escalante, in a manuscript jour- 
nal of a trip from New Mexico to the Great Salt Lake,t in 1776, mentioned 
having seen signs of their existence on his route ;¥ still, notwithstanding the 
* Mullan (Lieutenant John), Report of a Reconnaissance from Bitter Root Valley to Fort Hall, etc., 
Pacific R. R. Explorations and Surveys, Vol. I, Governor Stevens’s Report, p. 325. 
+ Utah Lake, according to General G. K. Warren (see the next footnote). 
t According to General G. K. Warren (Pacific R. R. Expl. and Surveys, Vol. XI, p. 35), ‘Father 
Escalante, in 1776, travelled from near Santa Fé, New Mexico, in a northwesterly direction to the Great 
