154 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
and meat, the herd is now mainly concentrated where it is temporarily less 
exposed to persecution than on the more accessible plains of Kansas. The 
range of the herd thus not only changes with the seasons of the year, but 
also from year to year, in consequence of attacks upon them at new localities. 
Unless legal interference, either by the States of Kansas, Colorado, and Texas, 
or by the general government, be speedily made, and rigorous restrictions 
most thoroughly enforced, the fate of the buffalo south of the Platte will be a 
repetition of its history east of the Mississippi River, namely, speedy exter- 
mination. 
Area now occupied by the Southern Herd.—The region south of the Platte 
inhabited by the buffalo is already reduced to a very limited area. At the 
northward their range extends over only the head-waters of the Republican, 
and thence westward to the South Platte, to the northward of which river 
they still sometimes appear, their range thus including the small portion of 
Southwestern Nebraska that lies south of the Union Pacific Railway. They 
range thence southward throughout Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado, 
the extreme western part of the Indian Territory, Northern and Western 
Texas, extending in the latter State southward to the 30th parallel, and 
from the 98th meridian westward over the northern portion of the Staked 
Plains nearly to the eastern boundary of New Mexico. In 1873 they ranged 
westward to within a hundred miles of Santa Fé.* 
Region between the Platte River and Parallel of 49°.— Passing to the north- 
ward of the Platte River, we will consider first the region situated between 
the Platte River and the United States and British boundary, or the 49th 
parallel. The buffalo, as is well known, formerly ranged over the whole 
country drained by the Missouri and its tributaries, as well as over the plains 
of the Red River of the North, and those of the Assinniboine and the Sas- 
katchewan. The plains of the Red River, in Northern Minnesota and 
Dakota, formerly connected the great buffalo range of the Upper Missouri 
region with that of the Saskatchewan, whilst the Grand Coteau des Prairies 
was for a long time one of the regions of their greatest abundance. Begin- 
ning with Eastern Dakota, or that portion of ‘the Territory east of the Mis- 
souri River, embracing the Grand Coteau des Prairies, we shall pass thence to 
the region between the Missouri River and the 49th parallel, and, lastly, 
trace their extermination over the vast triangular area bounded by the Mis- 
souri and Platte Rivers and the Rocky Mountains. 
* H. W. Henshaw, in a letter to the writer, dated March 6, 1875. 
