96 THE FORMER RANGE OF THE BUFFALO. 
on the sea board, and that he was informed that, from the last 
seen in that State, two were killed in the vicinity of Colum 
“ It thus appears that at one period this animal ranged over ne: 
the whole of North America.”* Names of places still retained, 
in many instances, indicate the former range of the buffalo. £ 
river upon the Upper Mississippi was called by the Indians Bees 
hike Sepe, or Buffalo River, “on account,” Father Hennepin s 
“of the number of buffaloes found there.” Charlevoix speaks 
river near Niagara Falls, which bore the name of La Riviere aut 
Beufs, or Buffalo River, which was, no doubt, a French transla- 
tion of the Indian name. Schoolcraft says that the city of Buti 
perpetuates the tradition of the former existence of the b 
near Lake Erie, From Charlevoix we learn that, at the time 
passed through Lake Erie (1721), the buffalo was still found in it 
vicinity. Writing from The Strait (Detroit), he says, “at the end 
of five or six leagues, inclining towards the Lake Erie, one 
vast meadows which extend above a hundred leagues every "ai 
and which feed a prodigious number of those cattle which I ba 
already mentioned several times.” t x 
The view that the name La Riviere aux Bæufs, and that of the 
city of Buffalo, perpetuate the traditionary existence of the b 
at the east end of Lake Erie, is corroborated by the fact, § 
by Dr. Elliott Coues in the November number of the NATUR 
that the buffalo formerly existed on the Kenawha River m 
nia. 
Schoolcraft says, “It was found in early days to have © 
the Mississippi above the latitude of the mouth of the Ohio 
at certain times throughout the present area of Kentucky. © 
only ranged over the prairies of Illinois and Wi 
spread to Southern Michigan, and the western skirts of 
Tradition says that it was sometimes seen on the borders” 
Erie. It was also common to the southern parts of Wisco! 
and crossed the Mississippi into Minnesota above St. An 
Falls for the last time, it is believed, in 1820;”1 nd 2 
states, “in the days of our boyhood and youth, buffaloes T 
over the small prairies of Illinois, and herds of them 
through the open woods of Kentucky and Tennessee ; 
* The Quadrupeds of North America. Vol. 2, P- 55. 
tCharlevoix, Travel: in North America, Vol. 2, p. 13. 
t History, Cond., Prospects, etc., Vol. 4, p. 92. 
