Thus was the first seen buffalo described.  The nearest locality from whence it could have come was the State of Coahuila, in northern Mexico, between 400 and 500 miles away, and at that time vehicles were unknown to the Aztecs.  But for the destruction of the whole mass of the written literature of the Aztecs by the priests of the Spanish Conquest, we might now be reveling in historical accounts of the bison which would make the oldest of our present records seem of comparatively recent date.

Nine years after the event referred to above, or in 1530, another Spanish explorer, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza, afterwards called Cabeza de Vaca—­or, in other words “Cattle Cabeza,” the prototype of our own distinguished “Buffalo Bill”—­was wrecked on the Gulf coast, west of the delta of the Mississippi, from whence he wandered westward through what is now the State of Texas.  In southeastern Texas he discovered the American bison on his native heath.  So far as can be ascertained, this was the earliest discovery of the bison in a wild state, and the description of the species as recorded by the explorer is of historical interest.  It is brief and superficial.  The unfortunate explorer took very little interest in animated nature, except as it contributed to the sum of his daily food, which was then the all-important subject of his thoughts.  He almost starved.  This is all he has to say:[1]

[Note 1:  Davis’ Spanish Conquest of New Mexico. 1869.  P. 67.]

“Cattle come as far as this.  I have seen them three times, and eaten of their meat.  I think they are about the size of those in Spain.  They have small horns like those of Morocco, and the hair long and flocky, like that of the merino.  Some are light brown (pardillas) and others black.  To my judgment the flesh is finer and sweeter than that of this country [Spain].  The Indians make blankets of those that are not full grown, and of the larger they make shoes and bucklers.  They come as far as the sea-coast of Florida [now Texas], and in a direction from the north, and range over a district of more than 400 leagues.  In the whole extent of plain over which they roam, the people who live bordering upon it descend and kill them for food, and thus a great many skins are scattered throughout the country.”

Coronado was the next explorer who penetrated the country of the buffalo, which he accomplished from the west, by way of Arizona and New Mexico.  He crossed the southern part of the “Pan-handle” of Texas, to the edge of what is now the Indian Territory, and returned through the same region.  It was in the year 1542 that he reached the buffalo country, and traversed the plains that were “full of crooke-backed oxen, as the mountaine Serena in Spaine is of sheepe.”  This is the description of the animal as recorded by one of his followers, Castañeda, and translated by W. W. Davis:[2]

[Note 2:  The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico.  Davis. 1869.  Pp. 206-7.]