HUNTING THE GRISLY 

 CHAPTER I 



THE BISON OR AMERICAN BUFFALO 



A A 7 HEN we became a nation, in 1776, the 

 * * buffaloes, the first animals to vanish 

 when the wilderness is settled, roved to the 

 crests of the mountains which mark the west 

 ern boundaries of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and 

 the Carolinas. They were plentiful in what 

 are now the States of Ohio, Kentucky, and 

 Tennessee. But by the beginning of the pres 

 ent century they had been driven beyond the 

 Mississippi ; and for the next eighty years they 

 formed one of the most distinctive and char 

 acteristic features of existence on the great 

 plains. Their numbers were countless in 

 credible. In vast herds of hundreds of thou 

 sands of individuals, they roamed from the 

 Saskatchewan to the Rio Grande and west 

 ward to the Rocky Mountains. They fur 

 nished all the means of livelihood to the tribes 

 of Horse Indians, and to the curious popu- 



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