90 Field Museum of Natural History — Zoology, Vol. XL 



tion from the north, and range over a district of more than four hun- 

 dred leagues. In the whole extent of plain over which they roam, the 

 people who live bordering upon it descend and kill them for food, and 

 thus a great many skins are scattered throughout the country."* A 

 few years later (1542) Coronado saw vast herds of Buffalo in the 

 country bordering the upper Pecos River and observed them continually 

 during his journey across the plains of northern Texas. Gomara says, 

 "All that way & plaines are as full of crooke-backed oxen, as the mount- 

 aine Serena in Spaine is of sheepe. . . . These Oxen are of the 

 bignesse and colour of our Bulles, but their homes are not so great. 

 They have a great bunch upon their fore shoulders, and more haire 

 on their fore part than on their hinder part: and it is like wooll. They 

 have as it were an horse-mane upon their backe bone, and much haire 

 and very long from the knees downeward. They have great tuffes of 

 haire hanging downe their foreheads, and it seemeth they have beardes, 

 because of the great store of haire hanging downe at their chinnes 

 and throates. The males have very long tailes, and a great knobbe 

 or flocke at the end: so that in some respect they resemble the Lion, 

 and in some other the Camell. They push with their homes, they 

 runne, they overtake and kill an horse when they are in their rage and 

 anger. Finally, it is a foule and fierce beast of countenance and forme 



of bodie."t 



Early explorers continually refer to the vast numbers of Buffalo 

 in Illinois. The Jesuit missionary. Father Marquette, writes (1673): 

 '' Having descended the river [Mississippi] as far as 41° 28,t we find that 

 turkeys have taken the place of game, and the Pisikious that of other 

 beasts. We call the Pisikious wild buffaloes, because they very much 

 resemble our domestic oxen;" and later he adds ''they graze upon the 

 banks of rivers, and I have seen four hundred in a herd together. § 

 Describing the country bordering the Illinois River, he says, ''I never 

 saw a more beautiful country than we found on the river. The prairies 

 are covered with buffaloes, stags, goats." Tf 



La Salle (1680) ascended the St. Joseph River, crossed the portage 

 to the Kankakee and followed its course downward until it joined 

 the north branch of the Illinois. He writes, ''far and near the prairie 

 was alive with buffalo; now like black specks dotting the distant swell; 



* Davis's Translation, in his "Spanish Conquest of New Mexico," 1869, p. 67. 



t Translation from Gomara's Historia general de las Indias, Saragossa, 1552-53, 

 cap. 214. (In Hakluyt, R., Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Dis- 

 coveries of the English Nation, III, 1600, pp. 455-456; ex. ed. 1810.) 



X Not far from Rock Island, Illinois. 



§ French, B. T. Historical collections of Louisiana, Part II, 1846-53, p. 285 



^ French, B. F. /. c, Part II, p. 297. 



