120 Fiistory of the Buffalo. [ February, 
less soldiers—to explore the mountains to the north for gold. 
They returned July oth, having found no gold, but mines of a 
highly colored copper used by the natives, who also gave them 
a hide which they supposed once covered a tremendous animal 
partaking of the qualities of the ox and the sheep, and much 
used by the natives, “ which because the countrie was cold were 
very profitable, and served for coverlets because they were very 
soft and wooled like sheep. Not farre from thence towards the 
north were many oxen.” Subsequently when at Pacaha—west of 
the Mississippi—De Sota sent thirty horsemen northward to 
explore the country. At a poor town at which they stopped, 
they were informed that the country above was very cold and 
there were such store of oxen that they could keep no maize for 
them, but that the Indians lived upon their flesh. 
Alvar Nunez Cabeza, the treasurer of the ill-fated Narvaez 
expedition, wandering from Florida to Mexico with his three 
companions—1528 to 1532—-saw immense herds of buffalo, and 
from his account of them in his Neufragios received the appendix 
to his name “ de vaca” (of the cattle). In speaking of the section 
west of the Mississippi, he says: ‘In that country there were 
grey and black cows, with long hair, no bigger than those of 
Barbary, and their flesh coarser than Spanish beef.” 
In 1540, Coronado, in his celebrated expedition, first heard of 
buffalo at Cibola (Zuni), and says that the people: “travel eight 
days’ journey, into certain plains lying towards the North sea. In 
this country are certain skins well dressed, and they dress them 
and paint them where they kill their oxen, for so they say them- 
selves.” He also saw an Indian there from another province who ~ 
had a buffalo painted on his breast, and his chronicler, Castaneda, 
speaking of the hides, says they are “ covered with a frizzled hair 
resembling wool.” After the expedition left Cicuic (Pecos) he 
says: “ All that way and the plains are as full of crooked backed 
oxen as the Mountain Serena in Spain is of sheep, but there is no 
people but such as keep those cattle.” 
Gomara gives the following description of the buffalo as seen 
by Coronado and his army: “Those oxen are of the bigness = 
and color of our bulls, but their horns are not as great. They — 
have a great bunch upon their fore shoulders, and more hair upon 4 
their fore part than on their hinder part, and it is like wool. They 
have great tufts of hair hanging down their foreheads, and it — 
. 
