The Figure a Photograph by C. C. Pierce & Co.
They were the "hunchback cows" which Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca first accurately described to the European world, although it is said that Montezuma had one captive in his collection of animals at the time Cortez pillaged the Aztec capital. They were later called "cattle or cows of Cibola" (and Sibolo)[4] by the Spaniards, perhaps because the inhabitants of the first group of native villages of New Mexico encountered by Coronado were supplied with buffalo robes and were in the habit of going to hunt the animals on the plains of the river Pecos, where at that time they were abundant. The name passed into common use and to-day, although there is the correct word Bisónte, the American bison is generally known in Spanish as Cibolo. In his celebrated traverse of the Texas and Kansas prairies in 1540 Coronado saw immense herds that roamed there. The buffalo range was great, especially in a north and south direction, its southernmost limit having been in north-eastern Mexico a little below the lower end of Texas, while its northernmost was the upper shores of Great Slave Lake. It seems, however, that it did not cover this range in latitude at one time, so that in Coronado's day the northern limit was doubtless considerably below Great Slave Lake. The buffalo was not migratory in the sense that herds from the extreme north traversed the entire range and occupied a place on the southern edge, but it was migratory as a whole, swinging back and forth from north to south and south to north like a huge pendulum, the various sub-herds always retaining practically the same relative position to the complete mass. It appears also that in this annual oscillation with the seasons it gradually retired from the extreme southern limit and encroached beyond its northern limit, till the position at the north mentioned was arrived at. This is indicated by the statement of an Amerind of the Athabasca country, who in explaining his age to Mackenzie, said that "he remembered the opposite hills and plains now interspersed with groves of poplars, when they were covered with moss, and without any animal inhabitant but the reindeer. By degrees, he said, the face of the country changed to its present appearance, when the elk came from the east and was followed by the buffalo; the reindeer then retired to ... a considerable distance."[5] It is therefore quite probable that, had not the European arrived to interfere, the buffalo eventually would have gone farther north and would have spread over Alaska. It was perfectly at home in the cold northland so long as the summers permitted grass and herbage to mature. The Saskatchewan country was full of them all winter, though they were forced to paw away the snow to reach the grass. The range east and west was also extensive, though this was not the direction of its annual movement. Its eastern limit was the extent of the Mississippi valley north of the Tennessee; and possibly as far as Lake Champlain. While seemingly not as numerous in this eastern part of its range as farther west, yet there were large numbers, and the hunters of the early days of European settlement often killed them. Albert Gallatin states that while in western Virginia in 1784 he subsisted chiefly on buffalo meat. The city of Buffalo takes its name from this animal, which formerly fed on its site. That they were abundant in this eastern region long before Gallatin's time is established by the large quantities of their bones found around the salt licks of the Ohio valley. At Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, these accumulations are so great as to indicate, beyond question, a very remote date for the beginning of the range of the buffalo in this region. Beneath them the bones of the mastodon are discovered.[6]
It is strange that no bison remains have thus far been found in the ancient mounds of the Mississippi valley; nor are there any images of them on Moundbuilder pipes. It is also strange that, despite the abundance of buffalo throughout the greater part of the West, pictures of it made by the natives should be so rare. The Sioux lived with and on the bison, yet they seldom drew it, while their robes are covered with drawings of horses and other animals.
On the west the limit of the range, at least north of about latitude 41°, up to the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century seems to have been the Rocky Mountains. Lewis and Clark, on their great journey of 1804-06, make no mention of the buffalo on the Pacific side of the mountains, hence it is probable that few had crossed there at that time. This would imply that it was the advance of civilisation which impelled the buffalo in numbers finally to seek passes over the Backbone and spread across the upper valley of Green River, of Bear River, and of the Columbia. The possibility always remains that there may have been other causes at work, perhaps climatic, to induce or assist this movement, and it is also possible that the animal may have crossed earlier, and have temporarily refrained from migrating in that direction, perchance on account of extra deep snow or some such natural interference, although the usual snow did not prevent their crossing in dead of winter. Escalante's party in 1776 found abundant signs of buffalo on White River, near the Green, and killed one there. They named a canyon Arroyo del Cibolo because of the many buffalo trails in it.
But the modern Pai Utes apparently had no knowledge of this animal, so that if it ever was found in any numbers in southern Utah, the period of occupation must have been remote. Dr. Coues believed that it ranged at one time in Arizona, though he could not recall the ground for this belief, simply remembering that it appeared to him sufficient at the time. The only indication that I know of, of the former presence of the buffalo in southern Utah is a rock picture found on the walls of Kanab Canyon (see [page 37]), some eight miles north of latitude 37° and about two west of longitude 112° 30´. This drawing would suggest that some natives captured a buffalo not far from the spot, though it might have been the record of a hunt at some other point. Buffalo would not have been likely to cross the vast depths of the Grand Canyon to the southward, hence they could have arrived at this place easily only by way of the Sevier River, the Escalante Desert, or by turning the western end of the Grand Canyon. At Gunnison on Sevier River a buffalo skull was found in a canyon ten feet below the surface. It is more probable that they would come from the north, yet if they did not cross the mountains there till 1810, a new difficulty is met with, for the present Pai Utes seem not to have made any rock pictures. These were done by the pottery-making, house-building Amerinds, who, as far as can be determined, had vanished from the region long before 1810.
Picture of Buffalo on Cliff Wall, Southern Utah.
Pecked Drawing Copied by B. L. Young.
I do not remember any reference to buffalo on Espejo's trip to Zuñi and west in 1583, nor on the journey Juan de Oñate made across Arizona and back in 1604-05; it is likely that if this animal ranged there it was before the time of Coronado. The south-western limit at that period appears to have been the first mountain range west of the Rio Pecos. North of latitude 57° they never crossed the Rocky Mountains. In 1820, according to Long, they had not yet entirely crossed in the central portion, that is to Green River and the Columbia, yet in 1824 they were ranging the Green, Columbia, and Bear River valleys in vast numbers. Up to 1823 they existed in great herds in the new State of Missouri, and their crossing to the Pacific slope thus appears about coincident with their retiring from this eastern ground. In their western range they extended as far as the Blue Mountains of Oregon, and even to the foot of the Sierra Nevada in the region farther south. Fossil remains have been found, according to Coues, within the limits of its range, east of the Rocky Mountains. There were two kinds of buffalo in the opinion of the frontiersmen, the wood buffalo and the prairie type. Apparently there was not sufficient differentiation in these to warrant the separation. They were practically the same, the variation being merely one of habitat, and individual change, like the occasional development of an extra rib. The buffalo inhabiting the woods usually grew to a larger size than that of the plains, but this was probably the result of a less active life and more abundant food. All buffalo at maturity were large animals, the male weighing 1000 to 1500 pounds or more, and the female from 800 to 1200. In size the adult male measured about 9 feet from muzzle to root of tail, and 13 feet 6 inches to end of tail including the hairs, which were about 15 inches long. In similar measurement the adult female was about 6 feet 6 inches to root of tail and 9 feet to the extreme end, the hairs being about 10 inches long. The male at the highest part was 5½ to 6 feet and the female about 5 feet; at the hips both sexes were around 4½ feet. The horns of the male were short and very thick at the base, with a quick taper to a sharp point. Those of the female were smaller at the base, but about the same in length and curve as those of the male. In winter the colour of the woolly hair was a blackish brown, but it became lighter in summer and so varied somewhat with season and locality. The hair was moulted in early spring except that on the shoulders, which with age became tawny—a yellowish brown.