THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 385 



Mr. E. W. Nelson to Mr. J. A. Allen, under date of July 11, 1877:* " I 

 have met here [St. Michaels, Alaska] two gentlemen who crossed the 

 mountains from British Columbia and came to Fort Yukon through 

 British America, from whom I have derived some information about 

 the buffalo {Bison americanus) which will be of interest to you. These 

 gentlemen descended the Peace River, and on about the one hundred 

 and eighteenth degree of longitude made a portage to Hay Eiver, di- 

 rectly north. On this portage they saw thousauds of buffalo skulls, and 

 old trails, in some instances 2 or 3 feet deep, leading east and west. 

 They wintered on Hay Eiver near its entrance into Great Slave Lake, 

 and here found the buffalo still common, occupying a restricted territory 

 along the southern border of the lake. This was in 1871. They made 

 inquiry concerning the large number of skulls seen by them on the 

 portage, and learned that about fifty years before, snow fell to the esti- 

 mated depth of 14 feet, and so enveloped the animals that they perished 

 by thousands. It is asserted that these buffaloes are larger than those 

 of the plains." 



Minnesota and Wisconsin. — A line drawn from Winnipeg to Chi- 

 cago, curving slightly to the eastward in the middle portion, will very 

 nearly define the eastern boundary of the buffalo's range in Minnesota 

 and Wisconsin. 



Illinois and Indiana.— The whole of these two States were formerly 

 inhabited by the buffalo, the fertile prairies of Illinois being particu- 

 larly suited to their needs. It is doubtful whether the range of the 

 species extended north of the northern boundary of Indiana, but since 

 southern Michigan was as well adapted to their support as Ohio or In- 

 diana, their absence from that State must have been due more to acci- 

 ,dent than design. 



Ohio.— The southern shore of Lake Erie forms part of the northern 

 boundary of the bison's range in the eastern United States. La Hon- 

 tan explored Lake Erie in 1687 and thus describes its southern shore : 

 " I can not express what quantities of Deer and Turkeys are to be found 

 in these Woods, and in the vast Meads that lye upon the South side of 

 the Lake. At the bottom of the Lake we find beeves upon the Banks of 

 two pleasant Eivers that disembogue into it, without Cataracts or Eapid 

 Currents."! It thus appears that the southern shore of Lake Erie forms 

 part of the northern boundary of the buffalo's range in the eastern 

 United States. 



New York. — In regard to the presence of the bison in any portion 

 of the State of New York, Professor Allen considers the evidence as 

 fairly conclusive that it once existed in western New York, not only in 

 the vicinity of the eastern end of Lake Erie, where now stands the city of 

 Buffalo, at the mouth of a large creek of the same name, but also on the 

 shore of Lake Ontario, probably in Orleans County. In his monograph 



"American Naturalist, xi, p. 624. 

 tJ. A. Allen's American Bisons, p. 107. 

 II. Mis. 600, pt. 2 25 



