90 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
Judge Caton says: 
Our antelope was an essential article of food among the aborigines inhabiting 
the country which it frequented before the introduction of fire-arms among them. 
They had various modes of capturing it, chief among which was the bow and 
arrow. This mode involved the necessity of getting a very close range. This 
could be done only by some kind of artifice, or by the most skillful and cautious 
stalking, always remembering its defective eyesight, its acute senses of hearing 
and smelling, as well as its inordinate curiosity. The latter infirmity was taken 
advantage of by the savage, who, approaching the game as nearly as he safely 
could from behind the sage bushes or other concealing object, exhibiting in irreg- 
ular motion a piece of the tanned skin of the animal, colored red or white, or some 
other attractive object, would attract the game. When the attention of the 
antelope is attracted by such an object alternately appearing and disappearing, 
its curiosity becomes excited and an interesting struggle commences between that 
and its timidity; it will approach cautiously, then retreat a little, then prance 
around, drawing towards the object gradually, till it is finally brought within 
bowshot. Then it was that the Indian would let fly his arrow from his conceal- 
ment, or spring to his feet, the arrow to the string, and the bow partly drawn, 
and strike his victim before his fleetness could* carry him beyond reach. 
In former days the prong-horn ranged from central Iowa to the 
Pacific Coast and from the Saskatchewan River to the interior of 
Mexico, most generally on the open plains or in broad valleys. There 
is no record of it being east of the Mississippi in historic times, no 
bones found even in the old Indian mounds, and no traditions among 
any of the eastern Indians. 
While the present range is smaller than that of the early nineteenth 
century by only a few hundred miles on the east and west, the former 
great abundance, computed to have been as great as that of the buffalo, 
has sadly dwindled until now probably less than three thousand head 
are all that remain. As an instance of this decrease let me cite a recent 
report from Colorado which says that, although there are a few prong- 
horns left in the eastern part of the state, there is only a lone one left 
of the thousands that used to roam in North Park. Dr. Edgar A. 
Mearns in ‘^Mammals of the Mexican Boundary” has this to say of the 
southwestern form, mexicana: 
The prong horn antelope is already [1907] a rare animal in the region of the 
Southwest, where it ranged in thousands twenty-five years ago. In much of the 
region covered by my field notes of the eighties no antelope can be found at the 
present day. The antelope was not uncommon from the Kio Grande to the 
Animas Valley during the operations of the International Boundary Commission, 
and antelope and deer were largely depended on for a supply of fresh meat. 
. . . . . In 1884 great herds of them could be seen in crossing the Terri- 
