60 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



tion, and the buffaloes, in passing constantly from the broad grassy divides to 

 the streams, soon form well-worn trails, which, running at right angles to the 

 general course of the streams, have a nearly north and south trend. These 

 paths have been regarded as indicating a very general north and south 

 annual migration of these animals. It is, indeed, a wide-spread belief among 

 the hunters and plainsmen that the buffaloes formerly performed regularly 

 very extended migrations, going south in autumn and north in spring. I 

 have even been assured by former agents of the American Fur Company 

 that, before the great overland emigration to California (about 1840 and 

 later) divided the buffaloes into two bands, the buffaloes that were found in 

 summer on the plains of the Saskatchewan and Red River of the North spent 

 the winter in Texas, and vice versa. The early Jesuit explorers reported a 

 similar annual migration among the buffaloes east of the Mississippi River, 

 and scores of travellers have since repeated the same statement in respect to 

 those of the Plains. That there are local migrations of an annual character 

 seems in fact to be well substantiated, especially at the southward, where the 

 buffaloes are reported to have formerly, in great measure, abandoned the 

 plains of Texas in summer for those further north, revisiting them again in 

 winter. Before their range was intersected by railroads, or by the great 

 trans-continental emigrant route by way of the South Pass, the move- 

 ments of the herds were, doubtless, much more regular than at present. 

 North of the United States, as late as 1858, according to Bind, 4 they still 

 performed very extended migrations, as this author reports the Red River 

 bands as leaving the plains of the Red River in spring, moving first west- 

 ward to the Grand Coteau de .Missouri, then northward and eastward t»> the 

 Little Souris Rivet, ami thence southward again to the Red River plains. 



A- already stated, a Blighl movement northward in summer and south- 

 ward in winter i> well attested as formerly occurring in Texas; the hunters 



report the same tiling as having taken place on the plains of Kansas; fur- 

 ther north the hull-does still visit the valley of the Yellowstone in summer 

 from their winter quarters t" tin- southward: along the 49th parallel they 



also pass north in summer and south in winter; there is abundant evi- 

 dence also of a similar north and south migration on the Saskatchewan plains. 

 Yet it is very improbable that the buffaloes of the Saskatchewan plains ever 



wintered on the plain- of Texas; and absolutely certain that lor twent\-li\e 



years they have not passed a- far south even as the vallej of the Platte. 



• i in. i'h. in Exploring Expeditioi \ II. p 108. 



