326 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETIESrOLCKSY [Bull. 137 



1770-71. The anonymous French memoir which dates from about 

 the middle of the same century, mentions a vagrant class of Indians 

 among the Choctaw who lived almost wholly by following about the 

 herds of bison, but the reference is not very definite. 



In 1675 Bishop Calderon included bison among the animals hunted 

 annually by the Timucua (Wenhold, 1936, p. 13). In 1739, on his 

 way to the Lower Creek towns, Oglethorpe came upon a considerable 

 herd of bison in central Georgia (Mereness, 1916, p. 219), but less 

 than 40 years later Bartram wrote, speaking of the country round 

 Augusta, Ga., "the buffalo (urus) once so very numerous, is not at 

 this day to be seen in this part of the country" (Bartram, 1909, p. 45). 

 One day in the spring of 1762, Lieutenant Timberlake's party was 

 run in upon by 17 or 18 bison on or near Broad River, eastern Ten- 

 nessee, and he speaks at least twice of the "incredible numbers" in 

 that country (Timberlake, Williams ed., 1927, pp. 47, 71). 



In his report on the exploration of Pensacola Bay made in 1693, 

 Don Carlos de Sigiienza y Gongora mentions bison several times. He 

 and his companions saw bison tracks near the western end of Santa 

 Rosa Island, and on East Bay River, at an abandoned Indian camp, 

 "we found a fire burning over which was a very tasteless stew of 

 buffalo entrails in a crudely shaped earthen pan, and the flesh of the 

 same animal roasted, or rather singed in some places and raw in 

 others, on some spits made of sticks." They also found "in buckskin 

 bags, the hair of buffaloes and other animals." "Small crosses made 

 of reeds were found," which "because of the thread and bunches of 

 buffalo hair attached to them" he concluded "served as spindles or 

 distaffs for the women." Half a league beyond, they came upon 

 another camp and again found bison meat cooking. 



What was peculiar here was the fact that the buffalo meat was not only 

 half-cooked as at the other camp, but it had been pounded into very fine, evil- 

 smelling powder in wooden mortars; there was a large quantity of all this, 

 for the reason that on this spot or near by they had killed a buffalo; this 

 had happened only a short while before, as the exceedingly large and frightful 

 head was still intact. Near numerous, not badly shaped pots and pans with 

 gourd dippers and ladles of buffalo horn in them were ten or a dozen tanned 

 hides of this animal. . . . There was considerable yarn of buffalo hair, 

 both slender and coarse, in balls and on cross-shaped distaffs of otate similar 

 to the others seen. (Leonard, 1939, pp. 157-158, 161-162.) 



That very year Torres de Ayala led an expedition overland from 

 the mission station near the present Tallahassee to the same bay, and 

 on the banks of a river, supposed to have been the Blackwater, saw 

 "numerous buffalo tracks" and later "found a buffalo trail leading 

 to a ford" over a deep creek (Leonard, 1939, pp. 233-234). 



In 1699, when the Frenchmen under Iberville ascended the Missis- 

 sippi, they found deer, bear, and bison skins deposited in the temple 



