BUFFALO AND MUSK OX 
pushed the buffalo further to the west, until by 1870 there were only two 
great herds which met and overlapped in a narrow belt of Wyoming. 
When Alexander Henry came to the Red River in 1799 he found the 
buffalo swarming along the Red River Valley, Manitoba, and this country, 
according to Alexander Ross, was still overrun with these animals until 
1810. In 1812 came the first Scottish emigrants to found the Red River 
Colony, and the buffalo soon began to disappear, until by the year 1860 they 
were rare animals in Manitoba. The last band was seen in 1861, when an 
immense herd was seen in Grand Valley, the present site of the town of 
Brandon. Stragglers were still seen in Manitoba until 1883. 
The total area originally inhabited by buffalo in North and South Dakota, 
Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma, 
reaches a total of 750,000 square miles, or about half of the plains, and 
it has been estimated that in early times this range held about 40,000,000 
buffalo, whilst the forest region of 1,000,000 square miles, being less 
populated, probably contained 5,000,000 buffalo. Colonel C. J. Jones, 
who has so closely studied the past history of this animal, estimated 
that in 1870 there were 14,000,000 buffalo still alive in one -third of their 
original range. 
Although scattered numbers of buffalo were to be found all over their 
range at all seasons, it must be concluded that the buffalo herds were 
migratory. In spring they travelled north for three or four hundred miles, 
then circled and headed back for their winter range in the autumn. All 
observers agree that this was the case amongst the two great herds, that 
were originally one, and were divided owing to the building of the Union 
Pacific Railway. During these migrations they were preyed upon by natural 
enemies, such as wolves, grizzly bears and Indians, and suffered fearful 
losses in bogs, prairie fires, blizzards, and rivers covered with thin ice. 
In the severe winter of 1871-2 enormous numbers of buffalo were 
buried in the snow in Dakota, and whole herds were found lying dead in 
the hollows where they had sought shelter. In the winter 1880-1, still 
known in Dakota as the “ blizzard winter,*’ the conditions were so severe 
that no buffalo could have survived them; whilst in that of 1870-1 great 
herds passed north but never returned. Every buffalo herd that passed 
was followed by large packs of wolves that picked off the young and 
the wounded. Prairie fires also undoubtedly destroyed large numbers. 
The Sioux, Cheyennes, Arrapahoes, and Black -feet Indians practically 
lived on them at all seasons, and yet so great was the number of the 
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