"This noble animal, which is the largest and most formidable of the ruminating species, existing in North America since the extinction of the Mastodon race, has been the most useful in contributing to Man's subsistence; and consequently most probably, allowed the longest the inhabit with him those vast and almost interminable regions of forest and prairie where the Great Spirit designed them to roam together.

By this portrait of a bull, which is a very faithful one, it will be seen that the American Buffalo is a very different variety of the Ox species from the buffalo of the eastern continent, and probably closely allied to if not exactly the same as the European Bison. These animals, which once were spread in vast herds over nearly all of North America, from the Rocky Mountains to the shores of the Atlantic, but now confined to a much narrower limit near the base of the Rocky Mountains, extending from the Mexican provinces in the south, to the latitude of Hudson's Bay in the north, are in size somewhat above the ordinary bullock, and their flesh of a delicious flavor, resembling and quite equal to the best of beef.

The flesh of the buffalo, which is easily procured, furnishes the Indians of those tracts of country over which they still roam, the means of a wholesome subsistence, and they live almost exclusively on it; converting the skins of the animals, their horns, their hoofs, and bones to the construction of dresses, shields, bows, etc."