126 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
location of the famed kingdom of Cibola by the early explorers, there do not 
seem to be any well-authenticated accounts of the existence of these animals 
west of the Rio Grande.”* It appears, however, that two centuries ago 
these animals were not unknown to the Indians of the Gila and Zui Rivers, 
who obtained their skins from the tribes living several hundred miles to the 
eastward. Thus Friar Marco de Nica, in 1539, found “ ox-hides” in the pos- 
session of the Indians living on the tributaries of the Gila, which they had 
obtained by trading with the people of the kingdom of Cibola;+ the ancient 
pueblo of Cibola being generally supposed to be near the site of the present 
pueblo of Zuni, on the river of that name.t The people of Cibola at this 
time not only used the skins as articles of dress, but for shields and other 
purposes. 
From the Yampah and Grand, and other tributaries of the Colorado, the 
buffalo formerly ranged eastward to the Parks and Great Plains, but I have 
found no record of their existence in the highlands of New Mexico, or any- 
where to the westward or southward of Santa Fé. Coronado, during his 
great expedition in search of the “Kingdom of Cibola” (1540 to 1543), in 
marching northward from the western provinces of Mexico across Arizona to 
the plains east of Santa Fé, met with no buffaloes till he reached a place 
called Cicuic, situated on the Pecos near the site of the present town of that 
name,§ “four leagues eastward from which place they met a new kind of 
oxen, wild and fierce, whereof, the first day, they killed fourscore, which suf- 
ficed the army with flesh.” 
Dr. Elliott Coues, however, in his paper on the “ Quadrupeds of Arizona,” 
published in the American Naturalist in 1868, || states that “there is abundant 
evidence that the buffalo (Bos americanus) formerly ranged over Arizona, 
though none exist there now.” On requesting recently more detailed in- 
formation of Dr. Coues respecting this evidence, he writes] that he finds 
Colorado... . . During this journey he was probably in the vicinity of Utah Lake.” This route would 
take him across the range of the buffalo west of the Rocky Mountains, since, as already stated, they at 
that time existed on the head-waters of the Colorado, and extended as far west as Utah Lake. 
* Whipple's Itinerary, Pacific R. R. Explorations and Surveys, Vol. III, Part I, p. 35. 
ft See Nica’s account of his journey as translated by Hakluyt. — Hakluyt’s Voyages, Vol. II, p. 439. 
t Davis’s Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, pp. 119, 120, footnote. 
§ See R. H. Kern’s Map of Coronado’s route in Schooleraft’s History, Condition, and Prospects of the 
Indian Tribes of the United States, Part IV, plate ili. 
|| Vol 1 p. 540. 
| Under date of “ Washington, D. C., May 5, 1875.” 
