

^ 



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dred miles above the Falls of St. Anthony ; * and Schoolcraft reports their 

 existence in the same vicinity as late as 1820. On the map accompanying 



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Schoolcraft's narrative of his expedition to the sources of the Mississippi 

 Eiver, he has marked the plains above the Falls of St. Anthony as the " Buf- 

 flxlo Plains " ; and in the text he says : " Here also [mouth of De Corbeau 

 Eiver] the Buffalo- Plains commence, and continue down on both sides of 

 the river to the Falls of St. Anthony." t The buffaloes may never have 



existed in 



Wiscon 



prairies of the western and southern portions of the State. They were not 

 met with, however, even there by the first European explorers of that 



region. 



Father Marquette does not appear to have met with them in crossing from 



Wiscons 



sequent descent of that river.t La Hontan, in 1687, also found none on 



Wisconsin 



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i not far above the mouth of the Wisconsin.§ Marquette first found 

 them on the Mississippi Eiver, in latitude "41° 287 in J%; 1673. "Having 

 descended the Eiver/' he says, "as far as 41° 28', we fin(r that turkeys have 



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taken the place of game, and the PisiJdous that of other beasts. 



the Pisikious wild buffaloes, because they very much resemble our domestic 



oxen. 



Following this is a description of the "pisikious," or buffaloes, and 

 the uses made of them by the Indians ; and he adds, " they graze upon the 

 banks of rivers, and I have seen four hundred in a herd together." T[ Hen- 

 nepin, Marest, Gravier, Charlevoix, and other Jesuit missionaries appear not 

 to have met with it on the St. Joseph's Eiver, nor anywhere in Southern 



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* Expedition to tlie Sources of the Mississippi, etc., Pt. I, App. p. 53. 



X Narrative Journal of Travel to the Sources of the Mississippi, etc., p. 275. 



X In an English translation of Marquette's narrative of his discoveries (French's Hist. Coll. of Lou- 

 isiana, Part II, p. 284), we find the following passage : in spealdng of the AVisconsin (" Mesconsin ") he 

 says : " The country through which it flows is beautiful ; the groves are so dispersed in the prairies that it 

 makes a noble prospect"; and he adds: "We saw neither game nor fish, but roebuck and buffaloes in 

 great numbers." Mr. J. G. Shea says : " The French word here is vache.% which has generally been trans- 

 lated bison or bulFalo." In this instance, Mr. Shea says, it is clearly a mistake, as Marquette and his party 

 had not yet reached the buffalo grounds, and the missionary afterwards describes the animal when he 

 meets it. — Discoveries and Explorations in the Mississippi Valley, p. 16. 



§ La Hontan, Voyages, Eng. ed.. Vol. I, pp. Ill, 112. 



II As Henderson has remarked, *' Father Marquette was doubtless the first white man who penetrated 



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to the habitat of the buffalo by way of the Great Lakes, although, according to Marquette, their skins had 

 been previously exported to Europe.** — Am. Naturalist, Vol VI, p. 82. 

 1[ French's Historical Collection of Louisiana^ Part 11, p. 285. 



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