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THE AMEEICAN BISONS. 



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Respecting its former occurrence in Eastern Oregon^ Professor 0. C. 

 Marsh, under date of New Haven, February 7, 1875, writes me as follows: 

 " The most western point at which I have myself observed remains of the 



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Willo 



i-) 



hills of the eastern side of the Blue Mountains. This is about latitude 44°. 

 The bones were perfectly characteristic, although nearly decomposed." 



The former existence of the bufiiilo in the Great Salt Lake Valley is es- 

 tablished by the occurrence of its remains there, in a still good state of 

 preservation, as well as by the testimony of those who have seen them 

 there. Along the railroad leading from Ogden City to Salt Lake City I 

 examined, in September, 1871, numbei'-s of skulls in a nearly perfect state 

 of preservation, which had been exposed in throwing up the road-bed across 

 the marshes, a few miles north of Salt Lake City. I also saw a few on the 

 terraces north and west of Ogden City, but generally in a disintegrated con- 

 dition, as were all that I saw which had not been buried in the recent deposits 

 about the Great Salt Lake. I was also informed that there is a tradition 

 among the Lidians of this region that the bufEiloes were almost entirely 

 exterminated by deep snows many years since. Mr. E. D. Mecham, of 

 North Ogden, a reliable and intelligent hunter and trapper of nearly forty 

 years' experience in the Eocky Mountains, and at one time a partner of 

 the celebrated Joseph Bridger, informed me that few had been seen west 

 of the great Wahsatch range of mountains for the last thirty years, but 

 that he had seen their weathered skulls as far west as the Sierra Nevada 

 Mountains.^ In 1836, according to Mr. Mecham, there were many buffaloes 

 in Salt Lake Valley, which were nearly all destroyed by deep snow about 

 1837, when, according to the reports of mountaineers and Indians, the snow 

 fell to the depth of ten feet on a level. The few buffixloes that escaped 

 starvation during this severe winter are said to have soon after disappeared. 

 Mr. Henry Gannet, astronomer of Dr. Hayden's Survey, informs me that 

 the Mormon Danite, " Bill " Hickman, claims to have killed the last buffa- 

 loes in Salt Lake Valley about 1838. How long the buffalo inhabited the 

 Basin of the Great Salt Lake, it is of course now impossible to determine, 

 but it seems probable that their occupation must date back to a remote 



* I was informed by several persons, whom I met in the Salf Lake Valley, that they had seen skulls 

 of buffaloes as far west as the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These persons were un- 

 known to each otiier, and their accounts were wholly distinct in respect to date and locahty, and hence 

 seem all the more entitled to credence. 



