THE AMERICAN BISONS. 143 
of a few stragglers in the extreme western counties. When I was in the 
western part of the State in 1867, I was informed that a few still remained 
in that section, and that up to that time one or more had been killed every 
year as far south as Greene County. They were represented as being more 
common further north, but that no herds were met with south of the Sioux 
River, and rarely east of the Missouri. Those found further east were only 
stragglers from distant herds.* Professor Bessey, of the Iowa Agricultural 
College, informs me that a few were seen in the bottom-lands below Council 
Bluffs as late even as about 1869, and also, at about the same time, in the 
northwestern part of the State, — stragglers, of course, from remote herds. 
In Minnesota, west of the Mississippi, buffaloes remained until a recent 
period. In 1823 Major Long found herds numbering thousands of indi- 
viduals about the sources of the Red and Minnesota (or St. Peter’s) Rivers. 
He states that in 1822 they did not descend the Minnesota River below 
Great Swan Lake, and that in 1823 “the gentlemen of the Columbia Fur 
Company were obliged to travel five days in a northwest direction from 
Lake Travers before they fell in with the game, but they soon succeeded in 
killing sixty animals.” The buffaloes are said, however, to have lingered 
about Fort Ridgely, situated a few miles above Swan Lake, till about 1847, 
and that as late as 1856 they were found one hundred miles to the north- 
westward of this point. As late as 1844 Captain Allen found large herds 
in the southwestern part of the present State of Minnesota. He says: 
“Seventy-five miles west of the source of the Des Moines we struck the 
range of the buffalo, and continued in it to the Big Sioux River, and down 
that river about eighty-six miles. Below that we did not see any recent 
signs of them. They were sometimes seen in droves of hundreds. 
While among the buffalo we killed as many as we wanted, and without 
trouble.”§ Pope states that in 1850 buffaloes were still killed in the imme- 
diate vicinity of the settlements at Pembina, and that they existed in great 
abundance between the Pembina and the Shayenne Rivers,| or along the 
present western boundary of the State. They appear, however, to have 
* See Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. XTIL, p. 186, 1869. 
+ Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter’s River, ete., Vol. II, pp. 9-24, 29. 
{ Assistant Surgeon A. B. Hasson, in Med. Statis. U. S. Army, 1839 — 1854, p 67. 
§ Allen (Captain J.), Congress. Rep., 29th Congr., 1st Session, Doc. No. 168, p. 5. 
|| Pope (General John), Report of an Expedition to the Territory of Minnesota, Congress. Reports, 
8ist Coner., 1st Session, Sen. Doc. No. 42, p. 27. 
