The Bison 125 



small number of remains, most of them extremely 

 old and weathered, which we found in this region 

 at that time. On the other hand, on upper tribu- 

 taries of the Green River buffalo were found 

 much later, and it is possible that these may have 

 been animals which wintered in narrow valleys 

 of the mountains, where, during this deep snow, 

 food was accessible. Fremont states that in the 

 spring of 1824 buffalo were abundant as far west 

 as Fort Hall, while Bonneville reported them in 

 extraordinary abundance in the Bear River Valley. 



The mere fact that buffalo were not seen by 

 an explorer who passed through any given terri- 

 tory does not necessarily show that they did not 

 range in that country. I have travelled for 

 months through a buffalo range without seeing 

 buffalo or any evidence of their very recent 

 presence, yet the signs found showed conclu- 

 sively that a short time before they had been 

 tliere in vast numbers. It would have been per- 

 fectly possible for two honest reports, made a few 

 months or years apart by explorers who were not 

 prairie men, absolutely to contradict each other. 



Although the buffalo disappeared from the 

 country west of the Green River, and even from 

 the Laramie Plains, a long time ago, it lin- 



