58 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



old chief Yakima Jim, about 110 years old, told me that when he was a boy 

 there were lots of buffalo around the Cow Creek Lakes country, but he says 

 they were all killed during a hard winter. 



Under date of- April 29, 1916, Schnabel wrote: 



The last time old chief Yakima Jim was at my ranch was in 1889 or there- 

 abouts. He told me the last of the buffalo were killed during a hard winter 

 when the snow was so deep they could not get grass and that a good many 

 tumbled over the high bluffs on the Owyhee River. I know where there are two 

 skulls near the Owyhee River. Mr. Riley M. Horn, who has a cow ranch 

 on the Owyhee back of my old ranch at the Cow Lakes can show you where 

 they are. The horn I have mailed you today was found about 30 yards from 

 the Caldwell and Jordan Valley stage road near the Ditton Ranch on Cow 

 Creek in 1915. This horn is in good condition, but thin and apparently from a 

 young bull. 



In a still later letter, October 30, 1916, Schnabel wrote from Cald- 

 well, Idaho: 



I have just returned from a trip to my old cattle ranch at Cow Creek 

 Lakes. Where the creek has washed a channel about 6 feet deep I found a 

 buffalo head imbedded in the old lake formation about 4 feet below the surface. 

 The horns had been carried away and the skull is very old and fragile. 



A letter received in 1917 from R. M. Horn, referred to by Schnabel, 

 states that he had found several buffalo skulls at different places in 

 eastern Oregon during the previous 18 or 20 years. 



In 1826 Ogden (1909, p. 355) and in 1834 Townsend (1839, 

 p. 82 ff.) recorded buffalo ranging west across southern Idaho to the 

 Malad River, and Hornaday gives their range as along both sides of 

 the Snake River west to the Fishing Falls (1889, p. 383). This 

 brings them within historic time close to the eastern line of Oregon, 

 but they soon after vanished from Idaho, as they had evidently disap- 

 peared from Oregon before the white man could take a hand in their 

 destruction. 



In 1921 fragments of buffalo bones mixed with those of deer, ante- 

 lope, and cattle were found in the open mouth of Malheur Cave, a 

 large volcanic tunnel about 18 miles southeast of Malheur Lake. 

 Various large animals and in recent years cattle had evidently used 

 this open tunnel as shelter from storms, and the debris near the 

 mouth included many broken bones. While partly protected from the 

 weather, the bones were in a mass of moist earth and still had a 

 fresh and sound appearance indicating no great age. A few pieces 

 of jaws containing molar teeth, a long dorsal process of a cervical 

 vertebra, and some other bones brought back were identified by J. W. 

 Gidley and O. P. Hay, of the United States National Museum, as 

 unmistakably buffalo. 



William Renwick, of Folly Farm, recently told of finding a fairly 

 complete buffalo skull in Barren Valley, east of the Steens Moun- 

 tains, in 1907, and A. E. Brown, on his ranch near Malheur Cave, 

 says that James Muse found buffalo skulls on his place in the tules 

 at the west end of Malheur Lake in 1884. Brown saw the skulls and 

 was sure they were buffalo. 



Early in December 1930, L. E. Hibbard at Burns took the writer 

 to the office of R. M. Duncan, who had three buffalo skulls, recently 

 picked up on the dry bed of Malheur Lake. An old bull and a cow 

 skull he had promised to a friend in Portland for the Oregon State 

 Museum, but he gave the writer the skull of a young bull and told 





