THE AMERICAN BISOXS. 157 



region, speaks of the extensive plains between the meridian of Fort Union and 

 the Rocky Mountains as being the " pasture-grounds of unfailing millions of 

 the uncouth and ponderous buffalo." * Lieutenant Saxon, in his report of a 

 journey down the Missouri, from Fort Benton to Fort Union, made in 1853, 

 says that during the last few days of their journey, as they approached Fort 

 Union, they saw innumerable herds of buffalo-cows, in many places extending 

 in every direction as far as the eye could reach, f Lieutenant Groger, the 

 same year (October, 1853), also found large bands on the Missouri from the 

 Musselshell to the Milk River, t and small bands were also seen by Tinkham 

 west of the Great Falls, on the Sun River, § where herds were .also observed 

 in January, 1854, by Lieutenant Groger. || In December, 1853, they oc- 

 curred in great numbers on Big Hole Prairie, on the head of the Jefferson 

 Fork.][ They were also reported as occurring on the Milk River, near Camp 

 Atchison, and also on other of the neighboring northern tributaries of the 

 Missouri. 



Dr. Cooper states that in 1860 "the buffalo herd of the Upper Missouri 

 was spread from the Rocky Mountains, near latitude 49°, southeast," and says 

 that he " found them along the Missouri, from its upper Great Bend, west to 

 about fifty miles above Milk River, but nowhere in great numbers. Remains 

 of their skeletons, left about five years since, were abundant west of Fort 

 Benton, and," he adds, "I saw one or more old skulls daily in the valley of 

 the Little Blackfoot and Hell Gate Rivers [west of the mountains], cp-ute 

 down to the junction with the Bitter Root."** 



Lieutenant M. E. Hogan, 22d United States Infantry, who for some years 

 previous had been in the United States military service in the Department 

 of Dakota, informed me in 1873 that the buffaloes had recently crossed the 

 Marias and Teton Rivers, in Northwestern Montana, from the northward, 

 and were abundant throughout the region about Fort Shaw, and that there 

 were "millions of buffaloes" on Milk River. 



Respecting the present range of the buffalo between the Missouri River 

 and the 49th parallel, and the evidences of their recent occupation of this 



* Pacific R. R. Rep. of Expl. and .Surveys, Vol. I, Governor Stevens's Rep., p. 167. 



f Ibid, p. 2G4. 



t Ibiil., p. 494. 



§ Ibid., p. 3G9. 



|| Ibid., p. 500. 



H Ibid., p. 167. 



** American Naturalist, Vol. I, p. 538. 



