THE AMERICAN BISONS. 143 



of a few stragglers in the extreme western counties. When I was in the 

 western part of the State in 1867, I was informed that a few still remained 

 in that section, and that up to that time one or more had been killed every 

 year as far south as Greene County. They were represented as being more 

 common further north, but that no herds were met with south of the Sioux 

 River, and rarely east of the Missouri. Those found further east were only 

 stragglers from distant herds.* Professor Bessey, of the Iowa Agricultural 

 College, informs me that a few were seen in the bottom-lands below Council 

 Bluffs as late even as about 18G9, and also, at about the same time, in the 

 northwestern part of the State, — stragglers, of course, from remote herds. 



In Minnesota, west of the Mississippi, buffaloes remained until a recent 

 period. In 1S23 Major Long found herds numbering thousands of indi- 

 viduals about the sources of the Red and Minnesota (or St. Peter's) Rivers. 

 He states that in 1822 they did not descend the Minnesota River below 

 Great Swan Lake, and that in 1823 " the gentlemen of the Columbia Fur 

 Company were obliged to travel five clays in a northwest direction from 

 Lake Travers before they fell in with the game, but they soon succeeded in 

 killing sixty animals." t The buffaloes are said, however, to have lingered 

 about Fort Ridgely, situated a few miles above Swan Lake, till about 1847, 

 and that as late as 1856 they were found one hundred miles to the north- 

 westward of this point, t As late as 1844 Captain Allen found large herds 

 in the southwestern part of the present State of Minnesota. He says : 

 "Seventy-five miles west of the source of the Des Moines we struck the 

 range of the buffalo, and continued in it to the Big Sioux River, and down 

 that river about eighty-six miles. Below that we did not see any recent 



signs of them. They were sometimes seen in droves of hundreds 



While among the buffalo we killed as many as we wanted, and without 

 trouble." § Pope states that in 1850 buffaloes were still killed in the imme- 

 diate vicinity of the settlements at Pembina, and that they existed in great 

 abundance between the Pembina and the Shayenne Rivers, j| or along the 

 present western boundary of the State. They appear, however, to have 



* Sec Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., Vol. XIII., p. 18C, 18G9. 

 t Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter's River, etc., Vol. II, pp. 9-24, 29. 

 J Assistant Surgeon A. B. Hasson, in Med. Statis. U. S. Army, 1839 - 1 S.">4, p 07. 

 § Allen (Captain J.), Congress. Rep., 29th Congr., 1st Session, Doc. No. 168, p. 5. 

 || Pope (General John), Report of an Expedition to (lie Territory of .Minnesota, Congress. Reports, 

 01st Congr., 1st Session, Sen. Doc. No. 42, p. 27. 



