THE AMERICAN BISONS. 145 
the Union Pacific Railroad and the consequent opening up of the country to 
settlement, has effected a wider separation of the herds, the buffaloes retiring 
every year further and further from their persecutors. None are now found 
for a long distance to the north of this road, and they approach it from the 
southward only along that portion situated between Fort Kearney and the 
Forks of the Platte. In treating of the “Southern Herd,” as the southern 
division is commonly termed, it will be found convenient to trace first its 
extirpation over the region to the eastward, and afterwards to the westward, 
of its present range. 
As previously stated, Nuttall found buffaloes in 1819 in Southwestern 
Arkansas and the adjoining portions of the Indian Territory.* Pike, how- 
ever, in 1806, first met with these animals on the divide between the sources 
of the Osage River and those of the Neosho Fork of the Arkansas, near the 
98th meridian, or near Council Grove in Eastern Kansas, and reports that 
they were already nearly exterminated over the hunting-grounds of the 
Osages and Pawnees.t In 1820 Major Long found no large herds east of 
the mouth of the Little Arkansas, near the 98th meridian. At the Great 
Bend of the Arkansas, however, he met with them for several days “in vast 
and almost continuous herds.” Catlin’s “Outline Map of Indian localities 
in 1833” § purports-to give also the range of the buffalo, but none are repre- 
sented as occurring between the Kansas and Arkansas Rivers east of the 
99th meridian, but in his account of his visit to the Comanche country he 
speaks of meeting with buffaloes about forty miles east of the junction of the 
False Washita and Red Rivers, or near the 96th meridian.|| 
General Doniphan, during his march in 1846 from Fort Leavenworth to 
Santa Fé, used bois de vache for fuel when passing the head of the Little Ar- 
kansas, and first met with herds of buffaloes on the Arkansas at Pawnee 
Ranch, near the present site of Fort Larned.{| The previous year Lieuten- 
a well-attested fact, that when the emigration first. commenced, travelling trains were frequently detained 
for hours by immense herds crossing their track, and in such numbers that it was impossible to drive 
through them. In many instances it was quite difficult to prevent their own loose cattle from mingling 
with the buffaloes, of which they did not seem to be at all afraid.” — Salt Lake Expedition, p. 34. 
* Travels into the Arkansas Country, pp. 149, 150. 
+ Pike (Z. M.), Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi, and to the Sources of the Arkansas, Kan- 
sas, La Platte, and Pierre Jaune Rivers, ete., in the years 1805, 1806, and 1807. 
¢ Long’s Exped. from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mts., Vol. H, pp. 204, 207. 
§ Catlin (G.), North American Indians, Vol. I, map. 
| Ibid., Vol. II, p 46. 
{| Hughes (J. T.), Doniphan’s Expedition, pp. 43, 47. 
q 
My 
q 
q 
1 
