The Bison 117 



from slaughter. In the arid region about the 

 heads of the Dry Fork and Porcupine Creek in 

 Montana, one of these little groups was left, 

 which yielded to expeditions sent out by the 

 National Museum and the American Museum 

 of Natural History, a series of specimens, proba- 

 bly the last of this species ever to be collected for 

 science. They were brought together just in 

 time, for since then there have been no buffalo. 

 A small herd of the so-called wood bison still 

 inhabits the vast wilderness between Athabasca 

 Lake and Lesser Slave Lake, but their numbers 

 are few. In the year 1900 there were two little 

 bunches of wild buffalo in the United States, per- 

 haps neither of them numbering more than fifteen 

 or twenty head. In the summer of 1901 one of 

 these bunches, which had long ranged in Lost 

 Park, Colorado, was wiped out by poachers, while 

 for some years nothing has been heard of the 

 other little band which ranged in Montana, and 

 which, in 1895, numbered forty or fifty head, no 

 less than thirty-two of which were killed a year 

 or two later by Red River half-breeds who made 

 a special trip to their range. At present the only 

 important band of buffalo in the United States is 

 that ranging within the confines of the National 



