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THE AMERICAISr BISONS. 



131 



FoRMEn Occurrence of the Buffalo over the Regiok between the 

 Mississippi River and the Eocky Mountains, and its gradual Re- 

 striction TO ITS Present narrow Limits. 



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For convenience of treatment, this region will be considered as embracing 

 the whole area between the Rio Grande and the British boundary, over nearly 

 the whole of which immense territory the bufialo is well known to have been 

 formerly more or less abundant. It seems to have been absent from only 

 the lowlands of the Lower Mississippi^ it formerly ranging throughout nearly 

 all of Texas, the higher prairie-lands of Northwestern Louisiana and Arkan- 

 sas, and thence uniformly northward and westward to the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, including also the Parks and the principal valleys within the Rocky 



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Mountains. Beginning at the southward, we find that the earliest allu- 

 sions to the buffalo refer to this region. Thus Cabega de Vaca, we are 



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informed, met with the buffalo (he being the first European who saw this 



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animal in its native haunts) in "Florida," in 1530, at which time this 

 name "was given to all that country lying south of Virginia, and extend- 

 ing westward to the Spanish possessions in Mexico."* Davis, in his "Con- 

 quest of New Mexico," claims that Vaca was wrecked at some point on 

 the coast of Louisiana west of the Mississippi.! Vaca journeyed thence 

 westward, and in his journal thus speaks of the buffalo, the locality referred 

 to being somewhere in the southeastern part of Texas: "Cattle come as far 

 as this. I have seen them three times and eaten of their meat. I think 

 they are about the size of those of Spain. They have small horns like those 

 of Morocco, and the hair long and flocky like that of the merino. Some are 

 light brown (pardillas)^ and others black. To my judgment the flesh is finer 

 and sweeter than that of this country. The Indians make blankets of those 

 that are not full-grown, and of the larger they make shoes and bucklers. 

 They come as far as the sea-coast of Florida, and in a direction from the 

 North, and range over a district of more than four hundred leagues. In the 

 whole extent of plain over which they roam, the people who live bordering 

 upon it descend and kill them for food, and thus a great many skins are 

 scattered throughout the country." t 



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* French's Historical Coll. of Louisiana, Part II, p. i. 

 t The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, pp. 41, 42, footnote. 



X Davis's Translation, in his "Conquest of New Mexico," p. 67. See also the account in Purchas 

 (Pilorims, Vol. IV, p. 1513), — an "abbreviated *' translation from Kamusio. 



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