THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 281 



ing forward and down, so tliat a considerable part of the iris is hidden behind the 

 lower lid, while the pure white of the eye-ball glares out over it in an arch in the shape 

 of a moon at the end of its first quarter. 



These animals are, truly speaking, gregarious, but not migratory. They graze in 

 immense and almost incredible numbers at times, and roam about and over vast tracts 

 of country, from east to west and from west to east, as often as from north to south, 

 which has often been supposed they naturally and habitually did to accommodate 

 themselves to the temperature of the climate in the different latitudes. The limits 

 within which they are found in America are from the thirtieth to the fifty-fifth degrees 

 of north latitude, and their extent from east to west, which is from the border of our 

 extreme western frontier limits to the western verge of the Rocky Mountains, is de- 

 fined by quite different causes than those which the degrees of temperature have 

 prescribed to them on the north and the south. Within these twenty-five degrees of 

 latitude the buffaloes seem to flourish and get their living, without the necessity of 

 evading the rigor of the climate, for which nature seems most wisely to have prepared 

 them by the greater or less profusion of fur with which she has clothed them. 



It is very evident that as high north as Lake Winnepeg, seven or eight hundred miles 

 north of this, the buffalo subsists itself through the severest winters, getting its food, 

 chiefly by browsing amongst the timber, and by pawing through the snow for a bite 

 at the grass, which in those regions is frozen up very suddenly in the beginning of 

 winter, with all its juices iu it, and consequently furnishes very nutritious and effi- 

 cient food, and often, if not generally, supporting the animal in better flesh during 

 these difficult seasons of their lives than they are found to be in in the thirtieth degree 

 of latitude, upon the borders of Mexico, where the severity of winter is not known, 

 but during a long and tedious autumn the herbage, under the influence of a burning 

 sun, is gradually dried away to a mere husk, and its nutriment gone, leaving these 

 poor creatures, even in the dead of winter, to bask in the warmth of a genial sun 

 without the benefit of a green or juicy thing to bite at. 



The place from which I am now writing may be said to be the very heart or nucleus 

 of the buffalo country, about equidistant between the two extremes, and, of course, 

 the most congenial temperature for them to flourish in. The finest animals that graze 

 on the prairies are to be found in this latitude, and I am sure I never could send from 

 a better source some further account of the death and destruction that is dealt among 

 these noble animals and hurrying on their final extinction. 



The Sioux are a bold and desperate set of horsemen, and great hunters, and in the 

 heart of their country is one of the most extensive assortments of goods, of whisky, 

 and other salable commodities, as well as a party of the most indefatigable men, 

 who are constantly calling for every robe that can be stripped from these animals' 

 backs. 



These are the causes which lead so directly to their rapid destruction, and which 

 open to the view of the traveler so freshly, so vividly, and so familiarly, the scenes of 

 archery, of lancing, and of death-dealing that belong peculiarly to this wild and 

 shorn country.* — Pages 247-249, vol. 1, Catlin's Eight Years. 



A BUFFALO HUNT NEAR FORT GIBSON, ARKANSAS, IN 1834. 



Mr. Catlin (pages 49 to 51, vol. 2, Eight Years) describes a buffalo 

 hunt, with officers of the First Dragoons, iu 1839 : 



In my last letter I gave a brief account of a buffalo chase where General Leaven- 

 worth and Colonel Dodge took parts, and met with pleasing success. The next day, 

 while on the march, and a mile or so in advance of the regiment, and two days before 



* The buffaloes are very blind animals, and owing, probably in a great measure, to the profuse locks 

 that hang over their eyes, they run chiefly by the nose, and follow in the tracks of each other, seem- 

 ingly heedless of what is about them, and, of course, easily disposed to rush in a mass, and the whole 

 tribe or gang pass in the tracks of those that have first led the way.— G. C. 



