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American Buffalo
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Length.—11 feet (adult bull). Height at shoulder, 5 feet, 8 inches.
Description.—Hind quarters light and short haired, fore quarters very heavy, with a high hump on the shoulders, and densely haired; head held well down below the level of the shoulders; horns curved outward, upward; tail with a terminal tassel. Colour, body and hind quarters pale gray brown, lower parts dark brown. shoulders, hump and upper neck covered with a dense mass of yellowish hair; head, lower part of neck and fore legs to the knees with dense shaggy hair, dark brown above and black lower down.
Range.—Originally Great Slave Lake to northern Mexico, New Mexico and Nevada; eastward south of the Great Lakes to central Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia and Mississippi.
In 1870. Great Slave Lake to Wyoming and central Texas, eastward to central South Dakota, Kansas and Indian Territory.
In 1880. About 550 in the extreme Northwest; 250 in Montana, Dakota and Wyoming, and 50 in Colorado and Indian Territory. (From Hornaday.)
In 1890. Apparently restricted to Yellowstone Park and other preserves.
To the northwest of its range occurred a related variety known as the woodland buffalo (B. bison athabaskae Rhoads).
The bison can scarcely be reckoned as a creature of our day, already it has taken its place with the aurochs of Europe as a thing of the past. Both species have probably reached the limit of their decline in numbers, and the remaining herds, if properly protected and cared for, may increase considerably in the years to come. But until our present civilization has worn itself out and this part of the earth's surface returns to a state of nature, and the cities have grown up through weeds and bushes to forests and woodland once more, the North American bison must continue only in memory and traditions.
For uncounted ages the bison held all the most fertile grazing land in this country as their own. When the Europeans began to form settlements in North America they occasionally found bisons in small bands near the Atlantic Coast. They were decidedly rare however, everywhere east of the Appalachian Mountains.
From Kentucky, all across the continent to Nevada, and from the Great Slave Lake to Mexico and Georgia, they wandered in mighty herds, migrating from one section to another as snowstorms and drought cut down their pasturages.
The first Western pioneers witnessed such sights as probably no other white men have ever seen or will ever see again.
Wide rolling plains blackened as far as even their hawk-like eyes could see, with huge hump-backed shaggy beasts, the old bulls bellowing and fighting and pawing up the earth which trembled everywhere as at the approach of an earthquake.
Coyotes and timber wolves skulked here and there through the herds watching for an opportunity to pull down an unprotected calf, and dodging the charge of the enraged parent as best they could.
Contrast with this the few hundred more or less degenerate representatives of this noble animal which now survive within the confines of preserves and parks or in the paddocks of zoological gardens, and all will agree that its extermination was one of the most shameful examples of man's greed and a nation's lethargy that is furnished in the history of our country.
The number of the buffalo that ranged over our Western States, even in comparatively recent years is almost inconceivable. Some idea, however, may be obtained from the statement of Col. R. I. Dodge, who in 1871 passed through one of the immense herds while travelling in Arkansas. For twenty-five miles he passed through a continuous herd of buffalo. "The whole country appeared one great mass of buffalo, moving slowly to the northward; and it was only when actually among them that it could be ascertained that the apparently solid mass was an agglomeration of innumerable small herds of from fifty to two hundred animals, separated from the surrounding herds by greater or less space, but still separated. The herds in the valley sullenly got out of my way, and turning, stared stupidly at me, sometimes at only a few yards' distance. When I had reached a point where the hills were no longer more than a mile from the road, the buffalo on the hills seeing an unusual object in their rear, turned, stared an instant, then started at full speed directly toward me, stampeding and bringing with them the numberless herds through which they passed, and pouring down on me all the herds, no longer separated, but one immense compact mass of plunging animals, mad with fright, and as irresistible as an avalanche. Reining in my horse I waited until the front of the mass was within fifty yards, when a few well-directed shots split the herd, and sent it pouring off in two streams to the right and left. When all had passed they stopped, apparently perfectly satisfied, many within less than one hundred yards....From the top of Pawnee Rock I could see from six to ten miles in almost every direction. This whole vast space was covered with buffalo, looking at a distance like a compact mass." ("Plains of the Great West.")