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146 



THE AMERICAN BISOXS. 



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Lieutenant Abert 



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reports meetmg with them the following year near the 98th meridian^ just 

 west of wliicli he found them in immense herds. f 



Lewis and Clarke^ in ascending the Missouri Kiver in 1804^ first met with 

 buffaloes at the mouth of the Kansas River;, but state that they did not 



become common till they reached the Sioux River.t Bradbury found them 



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in 1810 at Floyd's Bluff Audubon says that when he and his party went 

 up the Missouri Eiver in 1843^ "the first buffalo were heard of near Fort 



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Leavenworth, some having a short time before been killed within forty miles 



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of that place. We 



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see any of these animals 



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tmtil we had passed Fort Croghan, but above this point we met with them 

 almost daily, either floating dead on the river or gazing at our steamboat 

 from the shore." 



As early as 1834, Murray, in his journey westward from Fort Leaven- 

 worth into the Indian country, first met with buffaloes on the Republi- 



showing that they had already become extinct or of uncertain occur- 

 rence in Eastern Kansas. Fremont, in 1842, in marching northwestward 

 from Fort Leavenworth to the Platte Eiver, by way of the Kansas Kiver, 

 came suddeidy upon great herds just above Grand Isle, in about longitude 

 99° 30', or near the present site of Fort Kearney, The following year 

 (1843), in crossing the plains considerably to the southward of his route of 

 the previous year, he first met with the buffalo on the divide between the 

 Solomon and the Republican Forks, also near the 99th meridian.^ Emory, 

 in 1846, says that the range of the buffalo along the Arkansas was "west- 



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ward, between the ninety-eighth and the one hundred and first meridians of 

 longitude." *^ In 1849 Stansbury saw no buffaloes east of the Forks of the 

 Platte, but found them in abundance to the westward of this point. Captain 

 Stansbury 's guide reported to him that not many years before the plains 

 somewhat to the east of Fort Kearney were black Avith herds of buffaloes "as 

 fiir as the eye could reach." ft 



* Congress. E,ep., 29th Congr., 1st Sess., House Ex. Doc. No, 2. p. 217. 



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t JSTotcs of a Military Reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth^ Mo., to San Diego, Cal. Congress. Eep., 

 SOtli Congr., 1st Sess., Sen. Doc. ISTo. 7, p. 11. 



X Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Vol. I, pp. 1 9, 67. 



§ Quadrupeds of North America, Vol. II, p. 50. 



II Travels in North America, Vol I, pp. 208, 227. 



H Fremont's Explorations during 1842, '43, and '44, pp. 18^ 25, 49, 57, 109, et seq. 



** Emory (W. H.), Notes of a Military Reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth to San Diego, Cali- 

 fornia, p. 16, 



ft Stansbury 's Expedition "to the Great Salt Lake, pp. 29, 3G. 



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