THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 163 



only about the latest vents of the saline waters, which 

 have from time to time changed their points of escape 

 from the ground. The caverns of Kentucky and Tennes- 

 see, which were the homes of the aboriginal people of the 

 region, and receptacles for their dead, and where have been 

 found skeletons of the beaver, deer, wolf, bear, and many 

 other mammals, have never yielded any bones of the bison. 

 Moreover, among all the many figures of animals and birds 

 found on the pottery and ornaments of the prehistoric races 

 of the West, the marked form of the buffalo does not ap- 

 pear, making it presumable that this animal was unknown 

 to the people who built the mounds. Professor Shaler is of 

 the opinion, held by many ethnologists, that the " mound- 

 builders " were essentially related to the Natchez group of 

 Indians, and were driven southward by ruder tribes of red- 

 men from the north and north-west. The Indians north of 

 the Ohio are known to have been much in the habit of 

 burning the forests, and no doubt the invaders alluded 

 to above signalized their advance by such conflagrations. 

 This making of plains by the repeated burning of forests, 

 aided by " the continued decrease of the rainfall, which was 

 a concomitant of the disappearance of the glacial period," 

 permitted the buffalo to advance rapidly eastward as far as 

 the Alleghanies, and, coincidently, as far as the mound- 



