American Buffale 
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 athabaske 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 of 
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 
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