THE AMERICAN BISONS. HI 



Buffaloes are well-known to have existed on the Monongahela,* and 

 throughout the region between this river and the Ohio, over the area 

 drained by the Little Kanawha, Buffalo, Fishing, Wheeling, and other 

 small tributaries of the Ohio, where is said to have been much interval or 

 open land,f and and thence southward to the Great Kanawha. As already 

 noticed, there is abundant evidence of its former existence on the sources 

 of the Kanawha, extending even to the head of the Greenbrier River, in 

 Pocahontas County, and thence eastward, at times at least, over the sources 

 of the James. 



Gallatin states that in his time (1784-1785) "they were abundant on 

 the southern side of the Ohio, between the Great and Little Kenawha. I 

 have," he adds, "during eight months lived principally upon their • flesh." t 

 The following additional testimony, contained in a letter written by 

 Dr. Charles McCormick, dated "Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, August 

 18, 1844," is furnished by Dr. Elliott Coues. Dr. McCormick says : " I have 

 just seen Captain [Nathan] Boone, and he promises to write and tell you 

 all about it. In the mean time, he says, he killed his first buffalo some- 

 where about 1793, on the Kenawha in Virginia. He was then quite a 

 small boy. He has also killed buffalo on New River, and near the Big 

 Sandy in Virginia, in '97 and '98." § 



Ample evidence of the former existence of the buffalo in Northern Ohio 

 has already been given ; it seems to have been also found abundantly in 

 other parts of the State. Colonel John May met with it on the Muskingum 

 in 1788,|| and Atwater says, "we had once the bison and the elk in vast 

 numbers all over Ohio." ^[ Hutchins says that in the natural meadows or 

 savannahs, " from twenty to fifty miles in circuit," situated northwestward 

 of the Ohio River, from the mouth of the Kanawha far down the Ohio, 

 the herds of buffalo and deer were innumerable, and also mentions their 

 abundance over the region drained by the Scioto.** Its former occur- 

 rence over considerable portions of Kentucky is also most abundantly sub- 



* Trans. Amer. Antiq. Soc, Vol. II., pp. 139, 140, footnote. 



f Hutchins (Thomas), Topog. Descrip. of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, comprehending 

 the Rivers Ohio, Kanawha, Scioto, Cherokee, Wabash, Illinois, Mississippi, etc. (London, 1778), p. 4. 



t Trans. Am. Ethnol. Soc, Vol. II, p. 1. 



§ Amer. Naturalist, Vol. V, p. 720. 



II Journal and Letters of Colonel John May of Boston, etc., Hist, and Phil. Soc. of Ohio, New Series, 

 Vol. I, pp. 81, 83. 



H Atwater (Caleb), History of the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil, 1838, p. 67. 



** Topog. Descrip. of Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc., pp. 11-15. 



