NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 363 



"Originally mountain sheep inhabited every canyon, cliff, and 

 lava butte as well as many of the rough lava beds of Oregon 

 east of the Cascade Mountains. They were common until 

 recent years in the Steens and Warner Mountains and are 

 still found in the Wallowa Mountains and along the canyon 

 walls of the Imhaha River . . . There are also records of 

 sheep seen within the memory of many now living over most 

 of the extensive lava beds and buttes of eastern Oregon." 

 They were formerly abundant along the Deschutes Canyon; 

 old settlers who came to the Bridge Creek region on the John 

 Day River in 1873 found these sheep in bands of as many as 

 50 or more, but they have long been extinct. In the early 

 nineties they were numerous "on all the rimrock of the sur- 

 rounding country from Burns to Bend, on the rough rim of 

 Dry Basin, on Glass Mountain, Rams Rock, Juniper Moun- 

 tain, in the Warner and Abert Mountains, around Christmas 

 lake, and even out on the sagebrush plains where they some- 

 times joined the herds of domestic sheep and fought the rams. 

 They seem to have been last seen in the Mount Warner area 

 about 1912. Captain Louis, an old Indian, told Bailey that in 

 former days they frequently crossed the sagebrush valleys and 

 then were hunted on horseback witji bows and arrows. His 

 people reported them in the Wagontire and Juniper Mountains 

 as lately as the autumn of 1915. In the Steens Mountains the 

 last one was killed in 1911; at least a thorough search of these 

 mountains in 1916 revealed no trace of living sheep. To the 

 east of these mountains, they had gone at about the same time. 

 In south-central Oregon the bighorn sheep disappeared shortly 

 after the settlement of the country by white men. "In 1905 

 James H. Gaut was told by people living west of lower Klamath 

 Lake that mountain sheep had been numerous on the lava 

 ridges near there up to 1885 and that the last was killed in 

 1890." In Lake County, where formerly sheep were numerous, 

 they had nearly disappeared by 1897. In the 1939 census of big 

 game by the Fish and Wildlife Service, Oregon is credited with 

 50 Rocky Mountain bighorns, but though these may include a 

 few referred to this race that reach the extreme northeastern 

 part of the State (see Bailey, 1936, p. 65), the figure probably 

 also includes the remaining few Lava Beds bighorns mentioned 

 as still found in the Wallowa Mountains. To the southeast 

 there are probably still small numbers in western Nevada, but 

 their precise subspecific status is unknown. 



