72 THE AMERICAN BISONS.' 



Europeans visited America is still a matter of uncertainty, yet reliable data 

 are sufficiently abundant to establish the boundaries of its habitat at that 

 time with tolerable exactness. These data exist in the form of incidental 

 memoranda in the narratives of the earlier explorers, rather than in formal 

 statements bearing directly upon the subject, and though often unsatisfacto- 

 rily vague in respect to dates and localities, they enable us to trace approxi- 

 mately the eastern and southern boundary of its habitat at a date as early at 

 least as the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was beyond doubt 

 almost exclusively an animal of the prairies and the woodless plains, ranging 

 only to a limited extent into the forested districts east of the Mississippi 

 River, and never occurring as a regular inhabitant of the denser woodlands. 

 The opinion most prevalent in respect to its primitive range, as expressed by 

 authors who have given most attention to the subject, is, that it for a long 

 time inhabited the whole of that part of North America east of the Rocky 

 Mountains between the parallels of 30" and GO" ; some, however, make the 

 Alleghanies the eastern limit of its eastward extension. To the westward 

 some have considered its habitat as embracing a considerable part of that 

 portion of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains contained within the 

 United States. The purpose of the present article is not only to determine, as 

 definitely as can now be done, its former extreme limit of distribution, but to 

 give also a detailed history of its extermination over the area from which it 

 lias disappeared. Although hundreds of volumes and distinct papers relat- 

 ing to tin' early exploration and settlement of the country embraced within 

 the former range of this animal have been consulted in the preparation of 

 this paper, there probably still exist many important facts, incidentally re- 

 corded in little-known documents and in works in which such facts would 

 hardly be expected to occur, which have been overlooked, and which will 

 ultimately serve to indicate still more definitely the date of its extinction at 

 particular localities, though little probably that will materially affect the gen- 

 eral results herewith presented. 



Probable Extent of its Former Habitat. — The boundaries of the former habi- 

 tat of the buffalo appear to have lieen about as follows: Beginning with the 



region east of the Mississippi River, it- extension to the northward was limited 



by the (ireat Lakes, while the A lleghanies may be taken a- its general eastern 



limit, its occurrence in the mountainous and more elevated parts of the Caro- 

 linas being dm' rather to the occasional wandering of Braall bands through 

 the mountains from the immense herds that formerly inhabited the valleys of 



