144 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
very soon after left the whole valley of the Red River, being rapidly slaugh- 
tered and pressed westward by the incursions of the Red River half-breed 
hunters, who are reported to have killed annually, at about this time, twenty 
thousand buffaloes south of the United States and British Boundary.* A 
few lingered in the southwestern part of the State till within a very few 
years, or occurred there rather as stragglers from the herds west of the Big 
Sioux River, in Southwestern Dakota. 
From the foregoing it hence appears that the buffalo was more or less 
abundant over large portions of the States of Arkansas and Missouri as late 
as 1812 to 1815, but that few remained in either State later than 1820. At 
about this date they seem to have also disappeared from Eastern and South- 
ern Iowa, but were quite numerous in the northwestern part of the State, 
and adjoining parts of Minnesota, as late as 1840 to 1845, where occasionally 
an old bull was met with as late as 1869. As already stated, they disap- 
peared in Minnesota east of the Mississippi River prior to 1832;+ and they 
appear to have been exterminated over the whole region east of the Red 
River as early as 1850, and to have survived later elsewhere in the State 
only in the extreme southwestern counties, where a few lingered till about 
1869. 
Permanent Division of the Buffalo into two distinct Herds, and their Extermination 
over the greater Part of the Region between the Northern Boundary of Texas and the 
Platte River. — As is well known to those who have given much attention to 
the subject, the great buffalo herd that once extended continuously from the 
plains of the Saskatchewan to the Rio Grande was divided about 1849 into 
two bands by the California overland immigration, and that since that time 
the two herds have never united. The great overland route, as is well 
known, followed up the Kansas and Platte Rivers, and thence westward by 
the North Platte, crossing the Rocky Mountains by way of the South Pass. 
The buffaloes were all soon driven from the vicinity of this line of travel, 
thousands being annually slaughtered, a large proportion of them being 
killed wantonly. The increase of travel, and finally the construction of 
* Rice (H. M.), Pope’s Report (cf.), p. 4. 
+ Sce antea, p. 117. 
+ Respecting the influence of the overland emigration upon the buffalo, we find Captain Stansbury, 
who passed over the emigrant trail in the summer of 1849, speaking as follows: Under date of June 27, 
he says, “ To-day the hunters killed their first buffalo, but in order to obtain it had to diverge some four 
or five miles from the road and to pass back of the bluffs, the instinct or experience of these sagacious ani- 
mals having rendered them shy of approaching the line of travel. This has always been the case, for it is 
th ta nen 
