The writer has carefully traced out the legends regarding the occurrence of goat in Colorado, Utah, and California. There are persistent stories about the existence of white goat in Colorado, which, when investigated seem to have their origin in some domestic goat which are known to have escaped from captivity. It is, however, a certainty that Oreamnos has not existed in Colorado since the arrival of the white man, and there is no proof of its previous existence there. This statement is made after a full examination of the evidence.
The purpose of this paper has been to gather and summarize the known facts about this interesting animal and it has been necessary to discard a large amount of data contained in the literature of the subject. Statements by certain writers regarding the existence of the goat in Wyoming, Colorado, California, and even New Mexico, are extremely misleading. It is positively known that no goat have ever existed on Mt. Shasta, although this mountain has been a favorite locality for stories about mountain goat and the mythical ibex. The origin of these fables is easily traced to the former existence on Mt. Shasta of mountain sheep, the horns and bones of which are still occasionally found there. The straight horns of the mountain sheep ewe are probably responsible for most of these legends. It is bad enough to suggest the occurrence of goat on Mt. Shasta, but it is utterly absurd to assert their existence on Mt. Whitney, 300 miles farther south, and it is still worse to include in the range of the goat New Mexico or the barren coast mountains of southern California.[A]
[A] See “Sport and Life in Western America and British Columbia,” by A. W. Baillie-Grohman, page 117, London, 1900, and “The Wilderness Hunter,” page 130, by Theodore Roosevelt.
KID OF MOUNTAIN GOAT (STANDING) AND MOUNTAIN SHEEP OF SAME AGE
CAPTURED IN 1904, NEAR MICHEL, BRITISH COLUMBIA.
Now on exhibition in the New York Zoological Park.
The above examples will suffice to show the loose manner in which this subject has been treated by writers who have not sifted the evidence sufficiently.