128 



THE AMEEICAI!T BIS0:N"S. 



, -i 



■ I 



sufficient evidence of the exaggerated style of the narrative^ — -a fault well 

 known to be common to the descrijitive writings of those times. This ob- 

 scure statement does not apparently afford satisfactory ground for doubting 

 what historians have so generally accepted in respect to the buffalo^ namely, 

 that it was first met with in its native haunts by Cabe§a de Vaca, on the 

 plains of Texas, in 1530, and next by Coronado's expedition in 1542. In 

 rebuttal of this supposed proof of the existence of the buffalo in Western 

 Mexico, on the Yaquimi or Yaqui Eiver during the middle of the sixteenth 

 century, we have the rather weighty evidence that the other early Spanish 

 explorers who traversed this region did not even hear of the buffalo till they 

 reached the Gila, where they found, as before stated, its robes in the posses- 

 sion of the Indians, which the latter had obtained from the tribes living far 

 to the northeastward. In 1539, for example, Friar Marco de Ni§a set out 

 from the town of San Miguel, in the Province of Culiacan, situated far to the 

 southward of the Rio Yaqui, in search of the famed Kingdom of Cibola. In 

 this journey he reached the Zuni Eiver, whence he retraced his steps to San 

 Miguel and passed on to Compostella, situated in latitude about 21°, The 

 following year (1540) Coronado, with his large army, passed over nearly the 

 same route, both crossing the Eio Yaqui. Ni^-a, however, saw only the pre- 

 pared skins of the buffalo, which was also all that Coronado saw till after he 

 had passed Cicuic and reached the Great Plains east of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. It is from these explorers and from Cabe^a de Vaca that we get the 

 first specific account of the buffalo. It hence follows that there is good 

 reason for supposing the buffalo to have been absent from the western prov- 

 inces of Mexico, and from that part of the United States west of the Rio 

 Grande del Norte from a period antedating the sixteenth century till the 

 present time. Why it may not during some earlier period have existed 

 throughout this whole region would be hard to say, since, as will be soon 

 shown, its existence on the Yaqui River would not carry its range south of 

 points the buffalo is known to have reached on the Atlantic slope. 



i 

 ^ 



I 



FoEMER Range south of the Rio Gkaxhe del Norte. 



Most writers give the southern limit of the former habitat of the buffalo as 

 latitude 28° to 30°, believing it never to have extended south of the Rio 

 Grande. There is, however, sufficient proof of its former extension over the 



4 



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