150 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
parties near Pike’s Peak in 1873, and that in 1875 there was a band of about 
nineteen on the west side of Pike’s Peak, and another band of about sixty 
near Mt. Lincoln in the South Park. Mr. C. E. Aiken, probably referring to 
these, writes me that he kuows of but two bands existing at the present 
time (February, 1876) in the mountains about South Park, one of which 
“orazes on the mountains at the head of Tarryall Creek, and is frequently 
found above timber-line; the other ranges in the rugged mountains south 
of Pike’s Peak, and numbers some thirty or forty individuals.” 
In 1871 their bleached skulls were still frequent in the valley of the 
North Platte, in Western Wyoming, as well as on the Laramie Plains, but I 
was assured that only stragglers had been seen in all this region during the 
previous ten or fifteen years.* Stansbury reports meeting with them in 
abundance on Pass Creek and other head-waters of the North Platte in 
1849.4 
In respect to the extermination of the buffalo along the western edge of 
the plains in Colorado, and the present western boundary of the Southern 
Herd, I have been favored with a valuable communication from Mr. Wil- 
liam N. Byers, editor and proprietor of the “Rocky Mountain News.” In 
kindly answer to my inquiries he thus refers (writing under date of July 3, 
1875) to the gradual extermination of the buffalo along the eastern base of 
the Rocky Mountains. He says: “Perhaps the best idea I can give you of 
the shrinkage of the column on this side is gathered from the history of the 
early trading-posts established here, mainly for barter in their hides. The 
first trading-post in this [South Platte] valley was built in 1852, six miles 
below Denver, and about fifteen miles, direct, from the mountain foot. A 
trader employed here from 1832 to 1836 told me that he thought that he 
never looked out over the walls of the fort without seeing buffalo, and some- 
times they covered the plain. At that time their moving columns surged 
up against the mountain foot. Five or six years later the next fort was 
built five or six miles down the river, then a third a few miles below the 
second, and, about 1840, a fourth, nearly twenty miles below the third, or 
forty odd miles from the mountains. There the trade was concentrated and 
the up-river forts were successively abandoned, owing to the decrease of the 
buffalo in their vicinity. But great herds of buffaloes occasionally ranged 
over the present site of Denver as late as 1846. 
* See Bulletin Essex Institute, Vol VI, p. 59. 
{ Salt Lake Expedition, pp. 243 - 247. 
ear eee Ltn eects 
