THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 165 



traditions of the Indians. During the very severe and 

 snowy winter of 1836-'37 large herds were lost through 

 starvation ; by 1840 it had retreated eastward to the forks 

 of the Yellowstone, and been extirpated in the Utah Val- 

 ley and about the head -waters of the Colorado; and ten 

 years later was never to be found west of the Rocky 

 Mountains, between the British possessions and the Rio 

 Grande del Norte. Westward of this great river it does 

 not seem, within the past two centuries, to have extended 

 itself at all into the highlands of New Mexico ; but, farther 

 south, there is proof of its former range over the north- 

 eastern provinces of Mexico to at least the twenty-fifth par- 

 allel, though it was never abundant there, and abandoned 

 that region before the beginning of the current century. 



The great centre of buffalo-life in ages past was the vast 

 expanse of treeless plains which stretch uninterruptedly 

 from the Texas coasts almost to the Arctic Circle, and here, 

 in restricted areas, they have been able to survive until the 

 present time. 



When Cabega de Yaca met the buffaloes in 1530 they 

 ranged throughout nearly all Texas, the higher prairie- 

 lands of north-western Louisiana and Arkansas, and thence 

 uniformly northward and westward. But soon after 1820 

 they disappeared altogether from Arkansas, and were not 



