1936] MAMMALS OF OREGON 67 



into this part of the State and that the old rams would attack the 

 bucks in the tame herds. The sheep herders carried guns and often 

 shot them to keep them out of the herds. One of the cowboys roped 

 a ram out on the desert 65 miles southwest of Burns, and about 25 

 years before a ranch owner on Buck Creek shot a huge old ram on 

 the rimrock close to his house. He said the sheep were common in 

 the lava beds near Bend and all along the Deschutes River Canyon. 

 A few years after the tame sheep came into the country, he said, 

 the mountain sheep began to die of scab and he thought this disease 

 caused their rapid disappearance. 



An old Indian, Captain Louis, head of the Piute Band near 

 Burns, told the writer practically the same in regard to the range 

 of the sheep, but said they were common all over the rimrock of the 

 plains country of eastern Oregon before the white man came. He 

 said they crossed the sagebrush valleys so commonly that his father 

 used to hunt them on horseback with bow and arrows. He said they 

 left the Steens Mountains in Winter, going west to Warner Valley 

 and Summer Lake and east to the desert ranges east of Alvord Val- 

 ley. Many wintered on the low foothills between the Steens Moun- 

 tains and the great Alvord Playa. This part of the mountains he 

 called in his language Tudu paenaque Quoipa tevewa which means, 

 hills where the sheep go in winter. He said his people hunted the ani- 

 mals with bows and arrows on the Steens Mountains, where they 

 could get very close to them along the crest of the range. This 

 undoubtedly accounts for the unusual number of broken obsidian 

 arrow points scattered over the top of this range. Captain Louis 

 thought there might still be a few sheep in the Wagontire and 

 Juniper Mountains, where some of his people reported them in the 

 fall of 1915, and that there might be a few still in the Steens 

 Mountains. 



In 1916 E. L. Hibbard, of Burns, gave the writer the mounted 

 head and nearly complete skin of a 2-year-old ram that he had 

 killed in the Steens Mountains in November 1906, and the incomplete 

 head and horns of a 4-year-old ram picked up there. The writer also 

 examined another mounted head of a 4-year-old ram that he had 

 and a fine pair of horns of a 10-year-old ram, all from the Steens 

 Mountains. Hibbard thought at that time that there might be a 

 few sheep in the Steens Mountains, but he had not known of any 

 since 1909, when a band of 10 and another of 6 had been seen. 

 Sheldon was told that one had been killed in 1911 by Clifford Gros- 

 beck, of Narrows, and this may well have been the last sheep in the 

 Steens Mountains section. In 1916 a thorough search over a larger 

 part of the range by H. H. Sheldon and the writer failed to reveal 

 any trace of them. Sheldon carried the search from Kiger Gorge to 

 Wild Horse Canyon and over the rough Alvord slopes and pockets 

 for several days without finding a trace of them. 



In 1896 Merriam and the writer found a few along the crest of 

 the range near Wild Horse Canyon, but even then they were no 

 longer numerous and the domestic sheep covered most of their origi- 

 nal range to the crest of the mountains. 



'In the rough country east of the Steens Mountains the sheep 

 seem to have entirely disappeared, although there are occasional 

 reports of a few at some remote point. On a trip through the south- 



