228 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
On one of his accompanying maps this region is marked as “Terres 
Hautes,” while the low country, or “drowned lands,” of the present Lower 
Louisiana is marked “Terres Plates.” Hence, when in his later description 
of the buffalo he speaks of the Indians leaving “Lower Louisiana” to hunt 
the buffalo, he simply means that they leave the low flat country immediately 
bordering the coast and the river, especially the low country south and west 
of Baton Rouge, to hunt in the higher lands of the present State of Mis- 
sissippi, where, if we take Du Pratz as trustworthy authority, the buffalo 
must, at that time (about 1720 and later), have been abundant. Yet when 
this very region was crossed by De Soto, two hundred years earlier, the 
buffalo was evidently not to be found there. It hence appears to have 
spread in the mean time from the region more to the northward. West of 
the Mississippi, also, the buffalo, in Du Pratz’s time, extended southward over 
regions where it was not met with by De Soto or by La Salle, which affords 
further evidence that the buffalo extended its range considerably to the 
southward and eastward in the valley of the Lower Mississippi between 
1540 and 1720, or even between 1685 and the latter date, as seems to have 
been also the case in South Carolina and Georgia. 
It hence appears evident that at one time the buffalo occupied probably 
most of the region between the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers. On 
Du Pratz’s map, however, the course of the Tennessee is very incorrectly 
laid down, as it is also on the earlier map of De I’Isle, and on maps pub- 
lished much later’even than Du Pratz’s, its southern. bend on Du Pratz’s 
map not reaching the 36th parallel, while it actually crosses the 33d. He 
seems not to have himself passed above the Chickasaw Bluffs, and his 
knowledge of the country beyond on the east side of the river was evidently 
very vague. 
The presence of “ Boeufs” in the country drained by the Mobile River is 
also mentioned by un Offcier de Marine, in a letter published with Chevalier de 
Tonti’s “Relation” * (the authorship of which work, however, Tonti disowns). 
The presence of a creek in Southwestern Mississippi still bearing the name 
of “Buffalo Creek” may be considered as further evidence of the former 
existence of the buffalo in this region. 
It is to be regretted that Adair, who spent many years (1735 to 1767) as 
a trader and government official among the tribes south of the Tennessee 
River, has left so little on record respecting the range of the buffalo at that 
* Relation de la Louisianne, 1720, Vol. I, p. 11. 
