60 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



Valley on the west side of Eagle Lake, the Indians generally believed 

 that the buffalo came in small bands from farther north. This 

 would mean that they came in from Goose Lake and Warner Lake 

 Valleys, the natural highways from the ancient range of the buffalo 

 in eastern Oregon. Probably also they came through the broad, 

 open, grassy, and well-watered Quinn River Valley by way of 

 Buffalo Creek and Buffalo Spring, Nev., below McDermitt and 

 south through the broad, open southern end of the Alvord Valley. 



In 1916 Captain Louis, a chief of the band of Piute Indians near 

 Burns, and for several years a scout with General Crook, told the 

 writer that there used to be buffalo all over the Malheur Valley. 

 He thought he was then (1916) about 70 or 80 years old, saying he 

 was a young man, not married, at the time of the Modoc War. His 

 grandfather, he said, was here when there were plenty of buffalo 

 over the valley. They went into the mountains in summer and came 

 down into the valleys in winter and were hunted by the Indians. 

 He could remember, when a boy, seeing some of the very old men 

 with much- worn buffalo skins as robes, and he found, he said, buffalo 

 bones and horns in Malheur Lake when it was unusually low. His 

 grandfather had told him about the buffalo going away. The In- 

 dians followed them east to Crane Creek, to Malheur River, and 

 then across Snake River, over to the Bannock country. He thought 

 they left here about 100 years ago, but was not very clear in his 

 dates. The Indians still have a song calling the buffalo to " come 

 back, come back, and do not go away again." They sing it with the 

 drum as they dance and try to keep alive the flickering flame of 

 ancient hunting lore. 



It seems probable that these buffalo, which at one time were able 

 to maintain an existence among purely primitive people, were forced 

 to withdraw before the horseback Indians even before deadly fire- 

 arms came into general use among them. Lewis and Clark found 

 horses abundant among the Nez Perces in 1805; and in 1814 Fran- 

 chere (1904, p. 339), while among the Umatilla Indians of the 

 Columbia River, said: 



They are almost always seen on horseback and are in general good riders. 

 They pursue the deer and penetrate even to Missouri to kill buffalo, the flesh 

 of which they dry and bring it back on their horses to make their principal 

 food during the winter. 



The Territory of Missouri of that time was of course no farther 

 distant than what is now western Montana and but little farther 

 than the Malheur Lake section from which the buffalo had probably 

 already disappeared. 



Even after most of the buffalo had gone from Idaho the Oregon 

 Indians followed them beyond. On October 13, 1843, Fremont 

 (1845, p. 174) was overtaken near the Malheur River by a party of 

 Cayuse Indians returning from a buffalo hunt to the Rocky Mountains. 



There is no question that only a few generations back buffalo 

 covered in considerable numbers many of the large valleys of south- 

 eastern Oregon and that they disappeared after the introduction of 

 horses among the Indians and before many firearms were obtained. 

 A thrilling page of history seems to be missing, when red hunters 

 first mounted on horses learned their power to overtake and kill with 

 comparative ease and certainty big game as well as their less for- 



