THE AMERICAN BISONS. 157 
region, speaks of the extensive plains between the meridian of Fort Union and 
the Rocky Mountains as being the “ pasture-grounds of unfailing millions of 
the uncouth and ponderous buffalo.’* Lieutenant Saxon, in his report of a 
journey down the Missouri, from Fort Benton to Fort Union, made in 1853, 
says that during the last few days of their journey, as they approached Fort 
Union, they saw innumerable herds of buffalo-cows, in many places extending 
in every direction as far.as the eye could reach. Lieutenant Groger, the 
same year (October, 1853), also found large bands on the Missouri from the 
Musselshell to the Milk River,¢ and small bands were also seen by Tinkham 
west of the Great Falls, on the Sun River,§ where herds were also observed 
in January, 1854, by Lieutenant Groger.|| In December, 1853, they oc- 
curred in great numbers on Big Hole Prairie, on the head of the Jefferson 
Fork.§ They were also reported as occurring on the Milk River, near Camp 
Atchison, and also on other of the neighboring northern tributaries of the 
Missouri. 
Dr. Cooper states that in 1860 “the buffalo herd of the Upper Missouri 
was spread from the Rocky Mountains, near latitude 49°, southeast,’ and says 
that he “found them along the Missouri, from its upper Great Bend, west to 
about fifty miles above Milk River, but nowhere in great numbers. Remains 
of their skeletons, left about five years since, were abundant west of Fort 
Benton, and,” he adds, “I saw one or more old skulls daily in the valley of 
the Little Blackfoot and Hell Gate Rivers [west of the mountains], quite 
down to the junction with the Bitter Root.” ** 
Lieutenant M. E. Hogan, 22d United States Infantry, who for some years 
previous had been in the United States military service in the Department 
of Dakota, informed me in 1873 that the buffaloes had recently crossed the 
Marias and Teton Rivers, in Northwestern Montana, from the northward, 
and were abundant throughout the region about Fort Shaw, and that there 
were “millions of buffaloes” on Milk River. 
Respecting the present range of the buffalo between the Missouri River 
and the 49th parallel, and the evidences of their recent occupation of this 
* Pacific R. R. Rep. of Expl. and Surveys, Vol. I, Governor Stevens’s Rep., p. 167. 
+ Ibid, p. 264. : 
£ Ibid., p. 494. 
§ Ibid., p. 369. 
|| Ibid., p. 500. 
{ Ibid., p. 167. 
** American Naturalist, Vol. I, p. 538. 
