THE AMEBIC AN BISONS. 123 



their former existence in immense herds on the Jefferson Fork. In their 

 enumeration of the animals of the Pacific slope these travellers make no 

 allusion to the buffalo. They also state that the Indians on Clarke's River 

 crossed the mountains in spring to traffic for buffalo robes with the Indians 

 of the eastern slope* 



In 1820 Major Long also states : " They have not yet crossed the entire 

 breadth of the mountains at the head of the Missouri, though they penetrate, 

 in some parts, far within that range, to the most accessible fertile valleys, 

 particularly the valley of Lewis's River. It was there that Mr. Henry and 

 his party of hunters wintered, and subsisted chiefly upon the flesh of these 

 animals, which they saw in considerable herds, but the Indians affirmed that 

 it was unusual for the bisons to visit that neighborhood." This would seem 

 to fix the date of their arrival at the head-waters of the Columbia between 

 1805, when Lewis and Clarke visited them, and Mr. Henry's visit, about 

 1817. 



From Washington Irving's entertaining narrative of Captain Bonneville's 

 tour across the continent t we learn that Captain Bonneville first met with 

 the buffalo west of the Rocky Mountains on the head-waters of Bear River, 

 in November, 1833. t Passing thence northward, they found these animals 

 in abundance on the plains of Portneuf, where the Bannack Indians were 

 engaged in hunting them.§ But in his subsequent long winter inarch up 

 the Snake River, no buffaloes appear to have been met with. Returning, 

 however, to Bear River Valley, he again encountered large herds. The fol- 

 lowing summer (July, 1834) they again found them in great numbers on the 

 sources of the Blackfoot River, || but in a subsequent long journey northwest- 

 ward, from the Upper Snake River nearly to Fort Walla Walla and back, 

 they met with none, and rejoiced to find them again " in immense herds " 

 near their old camping-ground on an eastern tributary of the Snake River. 

 Captain Bonneville's party passed the winter of 1834-35 in camp on the 

 upper part of Bear River, surrounded by immense herds of buffaloes, which 

 came down to them from the north. " The people upon Snake River," says 



* Lewis and Clarke's Expedition to the Sources of the Missouri, and down the Columbia to the Pacific 

 Ocean, Vol. I, p. 469. 



t The Rocky Mountains ; or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West, — a Digest of the 

 Journal of Captain B. L. E. Bonneville. 2 vols., 12mo, 1837. 



t Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 125, 129. 



§ Ibid., Vol. II, p 33. 



|| Irving's Rocky Mountains, Vol. II, p. 1 79. 



