RANGE OF AMERICAN MAMMALS. 389 
numbers of elk, many of which were killed while crossing the riv- 
ers. Brickell says that the elk were plenty in the Carolinas as 
late as 1737. As late as 1826 a few elk were killed on the Sara- 
nac, in New York; a few were in the mountains of Virginia in 
1847 ; several were seen in the mountains of Pennsylvania in 1864; 
now it is probable that not one could be found east of the Great 
Lakes. 
The Bison (improperly called buffalo by the early settlers on 
account of its fancied resemblance to the European buffalo) also 
ranged along the coast from the valley of the Connecticut to 
: Florida. When Hendrick Hudson landed on the island of Man- 
hattan, he found some of the Indians clothed in bison robes ; they 
had also moccasins made of these skins. 
When he sailed up the river which now bears his name, he 
landed at what is now the entrance to Newburg Bay ; he was well 
received by the Indians, and one of the sailors happening to show 
some of the Indians an almanac in which were the signs of the Zo- 
diac, they knew how to explain that it was the head of an animal 
with which they were acquainted; and gave the whites to under- 
stand that it could be found in what is now known as the valley 
of the Ramapo; the Indians also explained that the animal had 
already begun to retire from the coast before the white men came 
here. The river Titicus, in Connecticut, formerly bore the name of 
Mutighticos, which Indian tradition signified to mean bison creek. 
Vanderdonck, in ‘‘History of New Netherlands,” 1642, says 
‘¢ Buffaloes are also tolerably plenty; these animals keep towards 
the southwest where few people go. These animals are not very 
wild, and some persons are of opinion that they may be domesti- 
cated. Persons who have got them when young, say they become 
very tame as they grow older.” It is remarked that the half of 
those animals have disappeared and left the country. The set- 
tlers of James River in Virginia also found them, and made an at- 
tempt to domesticate them. 
Father Simon LeMoine in his journey to the Iroquois in 1654, in 
which he discovered the Onondaga sand springs, says ‘that* they 
saw immense herds of cows and bulls.” On a map of the Fron- 
tiers of the Northern Colonies with the boundary line established 
between them and the Indians at the treaty held by Sir William 
Johnson at Fort Stanwix in November, 1768, the west branch of 
the Susquehanna, and Toby’s Creek, a branch of the Ohio, are 
represented as arising in a swamp called buffalo swamp. 
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