go Firrp Museum or Naturar History — Zoéroey, Vor. XI. 
tion from the north, and range over a district of more than four hun- 
dred leagues. In the whole extent of plain over which they roam, the 
people who live bordering upon it descend and kill them tor food, and 
thus a great many skins are scattered throughout the country.”* A 
‘few years later (1542) Coronado saw vast herds of Buffalo in the 
country bordering the upper Pecos River and observed them continually 
during his journey across the plains of northern Texas. Gomara says, 
“All that way & plaines are as full of crooke-backed oxen, as the mount- 
aine Serena in Spaine is of sheepe. . . These Oxen are of the 
bignesse and colour of our Bulles, but their hornes are not so great. 
They have a great bunch upon their fore shoulders, and more haire 
on their fore part than on their hinder part: and it is like wooll. They 
have as it were an horse-mane upon their backe bone, and much haire 
and very long from the knees downeward. They have great tuffes of 
haire hanging downe their foreheads, and it seemeth they have beardes, 
because of the great store of haire hanging downe at their chinnes 
and throates. The males have very long tailes, and a great knobbe 
or flocke at the end: so that in some respect they resemble the Lion, 
and in some other the Camell. They push with their hornes, they 
runne, they overtake and kill an horse when they are in their rage and 
anger. Finally, it is a foule and fierce beast of countenance and forme 
of bodie.”’ + 
Early explorers continually refer to the vast numbers of Buffalo 
in Illinois. The Jesuit missionary, Father Marquette, writes (1673): 
“Having descended the river [Mississippi] as far as 41° 28,t we find that 
turkeys have taken the place of game, and the Pisikious that of other 
beasts. We call the Pisikious wild buffaloes, because they very much 
resemble our domestic oxen;’’ and later he adds “they graze upon the 
banks of rivers, and I have seen four hundred in a herd together.§ 
Describing the country bordering the Illinois River, he says, ‘‘I never 
saw a more beautiful country than we found on the river. The prairies 
are covered with buffaloes, stags, goats.” § 
La Salle (1680) ascended the St. Joseph River, crossed the portage 
to the Kankakee and followed its course downward until it joined 
the north branch of the Illinois. He writes, “far and near the prairie 
was alive with buffalo; now like black specks dotting the distant swell; 
* Davis's Translation, in his “‘Spanish Conquest of New Mexico,” 1869, p. 67. 
{ Translation from Gomara’s Historia general de las Indias, Saragossa, 1552-53, 
cap. 214. (In Hakluyt, R., Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Dis- 
coveries of the English Nation, III, 1600, pp. 455-456; ex. ed. 1810.) 
t Not far from Rock Island, Illinois. 
§ French, B. T. Historical collections of Louisiana, Part II, 1846-53, p. 285 
(French, B. F. J. c., Part II, Pp. 297. 
