River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1894-08-02
THE BUFFALO.
semi-Annusl Migrations of the Vast Herd
Upon the Western Plains.


was in the buffalo county as ea-ly
as 62, and during the four following
years | traversed their ranges from
southern Texas to the Gallatin river in
Montana; and at that date know the
buffalo could only be found in certain
localities at certain seasons. One sum
mer during that period crossed Texas,
its entire breadth from the gulf to the
staked plain, and more than half its
length from north TO south, and never
saw nor heard of a buffalo. All the
cattlemen and rangers who were con-
stantly hunting cattle and ranging for
Indian horsc-thieves over every portion
of the state, declared that they had
all gone north. Getting into the
Indian territory in the early fall. we
found few old bulls-never more than
three or four in bunch-unmistakab
stragglers like those in the wake of an
army / do not believe there was at
that time a single buffalo in the state
of Texas that was able to get out of II.
and only few outcasts here and there
in the territory. as we crossed il at
point well supplied with grass and
water, and at distance from all the
Indian settlements.
Texas was, geographically speaking,
AN ideal buffalo country, but the buff
falo is decidedly an epicure, and its
grasses were to his taste far inferior
to those of the north. The great herd
crossed the Platte twice annually, 90
ing north in the spring and south late
in the fall, but il never tarried there:
and of the thousands of immigrants
which passed along on both sides
of the river at that early date
bound for Denver. Salt Lake. and
California, not one-half of them met
with single buffalo. The Republican
fork and the smoky Hill river were,
however, favorite winter ranges and
preferred by them to any portion OF
Texas, for the quality of the grass on
those rivers was better than il was
either further south or along the
Platte. II will perhaps be remembered
that while the Indians readily made
treaties permitting travel by wagons
and later by rail up the Platte, they
fought both propositions bitterly on
the Smoky HILL
But the home par excellence of the
buffalo, the land where he was at rest
and away from which he was never
contented to stay, was the valleys of
the Yellowstone and the upper Mis-
souri,. Here the sweet nutritious buff
falo grass, deprived of which he was
never happy, grew in greatest album
dance; down every mountainside
of that favored land tumbled
crystal streams of most refreshing
GOODNESS, where he could quench his
thirst and stand immersed for hours in
the heat of the day, for although able
to endure with impunity a climate of
arctic rigor, he suffered greatly from
heat and insects Here was his elysium,
the land of his birth; and it was only
when the deeply SHOWS of win
ter deprived him of his sustenance that
he reluctantly turned his face to the
retreating sun; and as many another
wanderer who, having once cut loose
from the charmed circle Of home, finds
finds no tic to bind his wayward feet,
so the buffalo drifts southwark, even
to the land of the Aztec
But he did not stay there. lie never
forgot that he was but visitor in a
strange land; and when the great
white winding sheet of winter
rolled away before the soft breezes Of
early spring, and the tender grass
springing into renewed life began to
tint the long swells of the prairie, then
did he gather together his countless
cohorts and sweep northward in
mighty host to the sources of those
great rivers that flow both eastward
and westward to the tea.
These migrations were at that time
as clearly defined and as well under
stood as are those OF the wild geese;
and the old frontiersnen always knew
about where the herd was at any par
ticnlar time, although large sections of
the range We're then overrun by hostile
Indians who never hesitated to exter-
inmate any party not sufficiently for
midable to make the success of an at
tack predetermined. - Forest and
Stream