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THE AMEETCAI^T BISONS. 



113 



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remain a great number in the exterior parts of the settlement." * Again he 



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says, after describing the salt licks of Kentucky : " To these [the licks] the 

 cattle repair, and reduce high hills rather to valleys than plains. The amaz- 

 ing herds of Bufikloes which resort thither, by their size and number, fill the 

 traveller with amazement and terror, especially when he beholds the pro- 

 digious roads they have made from all quarters, as if leading to some popu- 

 lous city ; the vast space of land around these springs desolated as if by a 

 ravaging enemy, and hills reduced to plains; for the land near these springs 

 is chiefly hilly." f 



Cuming, in describing the salt licks along the Licking and Ohio Rivers, 

 thus refers to the former abundance of the buffalo at these localities: ^^These 



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licks were much frequented by buffaloes and deer, the former of which have 

 been destroyed or terrified from the country. It is only fourteen or fifteen 

 years since no other except buffalo or bear meat was used by the inhabitants 

 of this country." He was informed by Captain Waller that " buffaloes, bears, 

 and deer were so plenty in the country, even long after it began to be gen- 

 erally settled, and ceased to be frequented as a hunting-ground by the 

 Indians, that little or no bread was used, but that even the children were fed 

 on game, the facility of gaining which prevented the progress of agricultui-e, 

 until the poor innocent buffaloes were completely extirpated and other wild 

 animals much thinned; and that the principal part of the cultivation of Ken- 

 tucky had been within the last fifteen years. He said the buffaloes had been 

 so numerous, going in herds of several hundreds together, that, about the 

 salt licks and springs they frequented, they pressed down and destroyed the 

 soil to a depth of three or four feet, as was conspicuous yet in the neighbor- 

 hood of the Blue Lick, where all the old trees have their roots bare of soil to 

 that depth." t 



Other references to the abundance of the buffalo in Kentucky, at the time 

 this region was first visited by the white settlers, might be given, but those 

 above cited seem sufficient for the present occasion. 



The buffalo seems also to have existed in considerable numbers in portions 

 of Tennessee, particularly about the salt springs on the Cumberland River, 

 as shown by Putnam's "History of Middle Tennessee." § This author gives 



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* Filson (John), Discovery, Settlementj and Present State of Kentucky, 1784, pp. 27, 28. 

 t Ibid., pp. 32, 33. 



t Cuming (John), Sketches o£ a Tour to the Western Country, etc., 1810, pp, 155, 156. 

 § Counties Da vi(Iso?i, Summer, Robertson^ and Montgomery. 



