American Buffak 



In 1890. Apparently restricted to Yellowstone Park and 

 other preserves. 



To the northwest of its range occurred a related variety 

 known as the woodland buffalo (B. bison athabaskcz Rhoads). 



The bison can scarcely be reckoned as a creature of our day, 

 already it has taken its place with the aurochs of Europe as a thing oi 

 the past. Both species have probably reached the limit of their 

 decline in numbers, and the remaining herds, if properly protected and 

 cared for, may increase considerably in the years to come. But until 

 our present civilization has worn itself out and this part of the earth's 

 surface returns to a state of nature, and the cities have grown 

 up through weeds and bushes to forests and woodland once more, 

 the North American bison must continue only in memory and 

 traditions. 



For uncounted ages the bison held all the most fertile grazing 

 land in this country as their own. When the Europeans began 

 to form settlements in North America they occasionally found bisons 

 in small bands near the Atlantic Coast. They were decidedly rare 

 however, everywhere east of the Appalachian Mountains. 



From Kentucky, all across the continent to Nevada, and from the 

 Great Slave Lake to Mexico and Georgia, they wandered in mighty 

 herds, migrating from one section to another as snowstorms and 

 drought cut down their pasturages. 



The first Western pioneers witnessed such sights as probably no 

 other white men have ever seen or will ever see again. 



Wide rolling plains blackened as far as even their hawk-like eyes 

 could see, with huge hump-backed shaggy beasts, the old bulls 

 bellowing and fighting and pawing up the earth which trembled 

 everywhere as at the approach of an earthquake. 



Coyotes and timber wolves skulked here and there through 

 the herds watching for an opportunity to pull down an unprotected 

 calf, and dodging the charge of the enraged parent as best they could. 



Contrast with this the few hundred more or less degenerate 

 representatives of this noble animal which now survive within the 

 confines of preserves and parks or in the paddocks of zoological 

 gardens, and all will agree that its extermination was one of the most 

 shameful examples of man's greed and a nation's lethargy that is 

 furnished in the history of our country. 



The number of the buffalo that ranged over our Western States, 

 even in comparatively recent years is almost inconceivable. Some 



