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THE AMERICAN BISONS. IBL 
ForMER OCCURRENCE OF THE BUFFALO OVER THE REGION BETWEEN THE 
Mississipr1 River AND THE Rocky MOUNTAINS, AND ITS GRADUAL RE- 
STRICTION TO ITS PRESENT NARROW Limits. 
For convenience of treatment, this region will be considered as embracing 
the whole area between the Rio Grande and the British boundary, over nearly 
the whole of which immense territory the buffalo is well known to have been 
formerly more or less abundant. It seems to have been absent from only 
the lowlands of the Lower Mississippi, it formerly ranging throughout nearly 
all of Texas, the higher prairie-lands of Northwestern Louisiana and Arkan- 
sas, and thence uniformly northward and westward to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, including also the Parks and the principal valleys within the Rocky 
Mountains. Beginning at the southward, we find that the earliest allu- 
sions to the buffalo refer to this region. Thus Cabecga de Vaca, we are 
informed, met with the buffalo (he being the first European who saw this 
animal in its native haunts) in “Florida,” in 1530, at which time this 
name “was given to all that country lying south of Virginia, and extend- 
ing westward to the Spanish possessions in Mexico.”* Davis, in his “Con- 
quest of New Mexico,” claims that Vaca was wrecked at some point on 
the coast of Louisiana west of the Mississippi.t Vaca journeyed thence 
westward, and in his journal thus speaks of the buffalo, the locality referred 
to being somewhere in the southeastern part of Texas: “Cattle come as far 
as this. I have seen them three times and eaten of their meat. I think 
they are about the size of those of Spain. They have small horns like those 
of Morocco, and the hair long and flocky like that of the merino. Some are 
light brown (pardillas), and others black. To my judgment the flesh is finer 
and sweeter than that of this country. The Indians make blankets of those 
that are not full-grown, and of the larger they make shoes and bucklers. 
They come as far as the sea-coast of Florida, and in a direction from the 
North, and range over a district of more than four hundred leagues. In the 
whole extent of plain over which they roam, the people who live bordering 
upon it descend and kill them for food, and thus a great many skins are 
scattered throughout the country.” + 
* French’s Historical Coll. of Louisiana, Part II, p. i. 
+ The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, pp. 41, 42, footnote. 
{ Davis’s Translation, in his “Conquest of New Mexico,” p. 67. See also the account in Purchas 
(Pilgrims, Vol. IV, p. 1513), —an “abbreviated ” translation from Ranmsio. 
