iiil 



-J 



THE AMEEICAK BISOJSTS. 



117 



e 



be found in a wild state east of the Mississippi, referring, doubtless, to 

 Mississippi below latitude 41°, Brackenridge,* in 1814, says the buffalo 

 may be said to have retired to the northward of the Illinois, and to the west- 

 ward of the Mississippi, and other writers confirm this statement/! 



Schoolcraft, writing in 1821, says that "the only part of the country east 

 of the [Mississippi] river where the buffalo now remains, is" that included 

 between the Falls of St. Anthony and Sandy Lake, a range of about six 

 hundred miles." Sibley says that ^'Uyo individuals were killed in 1832 



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by the Dacotahs or Sioux Indians, on the Trempe a I'Eau [Trempeleau] 



n," and adds, "They are beheved to be the last 



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specimens of the noble bison, which trod, or will ever again tread, the soil 

 of the region lying east of the Mississippi River." t 



Most writers^ in alluding to the extirpation of the buffalo throughout 

 the region east of the Mississippi River, speak of it as having been " driven 

 out" by the encroachment of settlements.§ While a few of the herds may 

 have migrated westward, it seems more probable that it wa;s exterminated 

 rather than driven out^ as it appears to have existed in West Virginia and 





Wiscons 



* V^ews of Louisiana, p. 56. 



f Ellsworth states, in his '^ Notes on the Wild Animals of Illinois," published in 1831, that "the buffalo has 



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entirely left us. Before the country was settled, our immense prairies afforded pasturage to lar<>-e herds of 

 this animal and the traces of them are still remaining in the ' buffalo paths ' which are to be seen in sev- 

 eral parts of the State. These are well-beaten tracks, leading generally from the prairies in the interior 

 of the State to the margins of the large rivers ; showing the course of their migrations as they changed their 

 pastures periodically, from the low marshy alluvion to the dry upland plains. In the heat of summer they 

 would be driven from the latter by prairie flics ; in the autumn they would be expelled from the former by 

 the mosquitoes ; in the spring, the grass of the plains would afford abundant pasturage, while the herds 

 could enjoy the warmth of the sun, and snuff the breeze that sweeps so freely over them ; in the winter 

 the rich cane of tlie river banks, which is evergreen, Avould furnish food, while the low grounds thickly 

 covered with brush and forest would afford protection from the bleak winds." — Ellsworth (li. L.), Illi- 



* 



nols in 1837, p. 38. (First published in the Illinois Magazine, July, 1831, and repubhshed in Featherston- 

 haugh's Monthly American Journal o£ Geology and Natural Science October, 1831, p. 180.) 



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% Sibley (H. II.) in Schoolcraft's History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, Part IV, p. 94. 



F 



Major Long states that in 1822 its wanderings down the St. Peter's Puver did not extend beyond Great 



^r- 



Swan Lake (Camp Crescent). — Exped. to the Sources of the St. Peter's River, etc., Vol. II, p. 29. 



^ 



§ Even scientific writers speak of it as having "gradually retired westward in advance of the migrating 

 column of the white race of man." — Leidy, Mevi. Ext. Sp. Amer, Ox, 1852. 



1 



*' At the time of the discovery by the Spaniards, an inhabitant even down to the shores of the Atlantic, 

 it has been beaten back by the westward march of civilization, until, at the present day, it is only after 

 passing the giant Missouri and the head-waters of the Mississippi that we find the American bison or buf- 



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falo. Many causes have combined to drive them away from their old haunts : the wholesale and indis- 

 criminate slaughter by the whites, the extension of settlements, the changes of the face of the country; but 

 above all, the mysterious dread of the white man, which pervades animal life in general as a con^>-enital 

 instinct." — Baird, Pat. Off, Rep,, Ar/ricult., 1851-52, Part II, p. 124. 



