102 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



the State of Mississippi, also diagonally, from the southeast to the north- 

 west.* De Soto learned nothing respecting the buffalo, save the report 

 brought him by the soldiers whom he sent northward from Northern 

 Georgia into the present State of Tennessee, till after he crossed the 

 Mississippi. 



Dii Pratz states i in a work published in 1758) that the Indians of Lower 

 Louisiana leave that country in winter to hunt the buffalo, as this animal. 

 he says, cannot come thither on account of the thickness of the forest/} 

 Adair, who spent several years in this region prior to 1770. and who de- 

 scribes with considerable minuteness all the low country bordering the Gulf 

 Coast east of the Mississippi River, t makes no mention of the existence there 

 of the buffalo, although he gives a general account of the game animals, and 

 speaks especially of the abundance of the deer, bears, and turkeys. Gal- 

 latin § gives the Tennessee Riveras their southern limit, and I have found 

 no positive reference to their occurrence south of that boundary. On an 

 old map. J! published originally in 1718, and reproduced m facsimile in French's 

 '•Historical Collections of Louisiana " (Vol. II), the region between the 

 Cumberland and Ohio Rivers is marked as follows : •• Desert de six viut limes 

 detendue ou les Itinois font la Chasse des boeufs." They are well known to have 

 been formerly abundant in the region about Nashville, and they probably 

 extended southward nearly or quite to the Tennessee, as a stream called 

 Buffalo River forms one of the tributaries of Duck River, itself one of the 

 principal tributaries of the Tennessee from the eastward. 



* Fur i the Route of De Soto, see Biedma'a Narrative, and that of the Gentleman of 



Elvas, in French's Historical Collect! f Louisiana, Vol. II, ami in the Hakluyt Society's publications 



(1851), with an Introduction, Notes, ami a Map by \V. I'.. Rye; McCulloch's Researches : Gallatin's Sy- 

 nopsis of tin- Indian Tribes (Archseologia Americana, Vol. II): Pickett's History of Alabama, etc. j Nut- 

 tall'* Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory ; Week's Sketches of tin- History <>f Alabama (South- 

 ron Monthly Magazine and Review, 1889); Monetl 's ll ■ ■ Du overj and Settlement of the 

 Valley of the Mississippi; Bancroft's Historj I Conquest of Florida; Schoolcraft's His- 

 tory, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part III. pp. 8 J BO, pi. xliv; 

 it... etc. 



t History of Louis! tna, Engl, ad . pp. 28 I 



* History of the American Indians (London, l ""•'>). pp 



mies of the buffaloes had traversed the Mississippi, and were at one time abundant In the forest 



country between the lakes an I tha Ti nn< nee River, th of whit h I do not believe thej were i rar m n 



Ethnological Soc., Vol. II, p. I. 

 | Carte de U Loolalaue et du Cours du Mississippi. lMv-r.- >ur un grand nombre de Memoires entran 

 lx sur de M'. le Main par Guill*"" 1 Di ri-ii de fAcadem 



