Marquette declared that the prairies along the Illinois River were
"covered with buffaloes." Father Hennepin, in writing of northern
Illinois, between Chicago and the Illinois River, asserted that "there
must be an innumerable quantity of wild bulls in that country, since the
earth is covered with their horns. * * * They follow one another, so
that you may see a drove of them for above a league together. * * *
Their ways are as beaten as our great roads, and no herb grows therein."

Judged by ordinary standards of comparison, the early pioneers of the
last century thought buffalo were abundant in the localities mentioned
above. But the herds which lived east of the Mississippi were
comparatively only mere stragglers from the innumerable mass which
covered the great western pasture region from the Mississippi to the
Rocky Mountains, and from the Rio Grande to Great Slave Lake. The town
of Kearney, in south central Nebraska, may fairly be considered the
geographical center of distribution of the species, as it originally
existed, but ever since 1800, and until a few years ago, the center of
population has been in the Black Hills of southwestern Dakota.

Between the Rocky Mountains and the States lying along the Mississippi
River on the west, from Minnesota to Louisiana, the whole country was
one vast buffalo range, inhabited by millions of buffaloes. One could
fill a volume with the records of plainsmen and pioneers who penetrated
or crossed that vast region between 1800 and 1870, and were in turn
surprised, astounded, and frequently dismayed by the tens of thousands
of buffaloes they observed, avoided, or escaped from. They lived and
moved as no other quadrupeds ever have, in great multitudes, like grand
armies in review, covering scores of square miles at once. They were so
numerous they frequently stopped boats in the rivers, threatened to
overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in later years derailed