The presence of the buffalo in the Delta of the Mississippi was observed
and recorded by D'Iberville in 1699.[13]

[Note 13: Hist. Coll. of Louisiana and Florida, French, second series,
p. 58.]

According to Claiborne,[14] the Choctaws have an interesting tradition
in regard to the disappearance of the buffalo from Mississippi. It
relates that during the early part of the eighteenth century a great
drought occurred, which was particularly severe in the prairie region.
For three years not a drop of rain fell. The Nowubee and Tombigbee
Rivers dried up and the forests perished. The elk and buffalo, which up
to that time had been numerous, all migrated to the country beyond the
Mississippi, and never returned.

[Note 14: Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, p. 484.]

TEXAS.--It will be remembered that it was in southeastern Texas, in all
probability within 50 miles of the present city of Houston, that the
earliest discovery of the American bison on its native heath was made in
1530 by Cabeza de Vaca, a half-starved, half-naked, and wholly wretched
Spaniard, almost the only surviving member of the celebrated expedition
which burned its ships behind it. In speaking of the buffalo in Texas at
the earliest periods of which we have any historical record, Professor
Allen says: "They were also found in immense herds on the coast of
Texas, at the Bay of St. Bernard (Matagorda Bay), and on the lower part
of the Colorado (Rio Grande, according to some authorities), by La
Salle, in 1685, and thence northwards across the Colorado, Brazos, and
Trinity Rivers." Joutel says that when in latitude 28° 51' "the sight