There has been a lot of conjecture and controversy regarding the presence of bison or buffalo in the Ohio region. Reports from archaeologists indicate the bison did not come into Ohio until the 17th century. Some scholars believe that drought on the plains in the 1600’s encouraged bison herds to migrate up the Mississippi River to the Ohio River and its headwaters. (Buffalo Tales: The Near-Extermination of the American Bison, Shepard Krech III, Brown University National Humanities Center) Most of the Bison remains in Ohio are associated with later cultures, particularly, the Fort Ancient Culture, which thrived in the region between 1000 AD, and 1650 AD. The earliest actual account found to date comes from French explorer, M.de Vandreuil, in a memoir on Canada 1687, “Buffaloes abound on the south shore of Lake Erie but not on the north.
Another Frenchman, Sabrevois de Bleurys wrote in 1718, “Thirty leagues up from Lake Erie is a place called La glaine (the place of clay, i.e. a salt lick) where one always finds wild cattle, which eat the clay and roll in it.” In 1751, Christopher Gist, traveling from present day Portsmouth to Fort Pickawillany, north of Piqua, Ohio wrote in his journal that he saw thirty or forty buffalo a day in that region. An archaeological site in Licking County revealed a complete bison skeleton supporting the historical evidence.
Fossil remains unearthed at Big Bone Lick, Kentucky indicated the bison had been inhabiting the area since the Pleistocene era. However, subsequent investigation revealed those were of the extinct variety called bison latifrons. The bison americanus, or American Bison is the one that seems to have turned toward the Ohio Region during a time of changes both in climate out west and culture in the east. There are several 18th century accounts of buffalo sightings in the southwest part of the Pennsylvania commonwealth. The Moravian missionary John Heckewelder, who crossed the Allegany Mountains over sixty times and logged 30,000 miles on the frontier, recorded them in the region during the 1770’s. In 1773, he documented meeting an Indian near Marietta, Ohio, on his way home from a hunting trip. The Indian apparently had shot a bison only fifty miles from the Pennsylvania border. (The Travels of John Heckewelder in Frontier America.)
An earlier account of bison in the Pennsylvania area east of the Ohio, came from an officer serving under General Braddock. The officer noted that “a salt lick was being used by deer, buffaloes and bears.” This was in an area known today as Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Some scholars are skeptical that the bison was anything more than a rare visitor in western Pennsylvania. The evidence to date indicates that bison rarely crossed the Mississippi River until after 1600. There has yet to be archaeological evidence found in Pennsylvania to support any herds of bison prior to that time. Some scholars have argued that bison could not have existed in Pennsylvania due to a lack of grazing habitat. Although Pennsylvania had a heavily forested ecosystem, there was also a change in that due to the influx of Lenape, Shawnee, Susquehanna and other Native populations. Their presence altered the environment through the clearing of woodland regions, which were opened for cultivation in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Considered a fringe habitat at that time, western Pennsylvania provided just enough floodplain grazing to support the occasional small herd of bison. As the Native population dwindled, there was also an additional temporary availability of what had been croplands. These areas could have accounted for an increase in the natural food supply for grazing animals just about the time the species was moving east in its range.
The presence of buffalo in the Susquehanna Watershed is controversial among historians. In 1915, Henry W. Shoemaker printed a book, A Pennsylvania Bison Hunt, which tells of huge herds buffalo migrating from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia through the Susquehanna River Valley. Often cited as, “proof,” that bison were in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Shoemaker’s words are tainted with fiction and cannot be taken seriously in the scientific community even if they may indeed contain a grain of truth.
With that said, Pennsylvania and other eastern states have numerous locations named after buffalo. In frontier culture, it was not uncommon to name lands after a rare or unique sighting of wildlife. The sheer numbers of buffalo place names does make a strong case that some of the earliest white settlers must have encountered bison or Native Americans who told stories of bison sightings in locations not considered the norm for herds of free roaming bison.
When European settlers first arrived in the Ohio country, there were many bison throughout the region. With the arrival of settlers, the bison population rapidly declined. Zeisburger lived for many decades with Lenape, Seneca, and Shawnee keeping journals of his missionary work and his observations. He noted that at one time bison appeared in great numbers along the Muskingum, but as soon as the Indians inhabited the country, the bison disappeared rapidly from the area.The bison were then seen only in areas further south around the mouth of the Muskingum and along the banks of the Scioto.
The last Bison recorded in Ohio was shot and killed in Lawrence County, in 1803. The last known bison seen in Indiana was around 1799 crossing the river, near Vincennes. There are places just south of French Lick, Indiana today where wide ruts in the ground are still visible where bison had rambled on their annual migrations back and forth between Kentucky and the Indiana and Illinois prairie. Last seen in the prairies of Kentucky in the 1820’s, the American bison, attracted to the grasslands and abundance of salt licks, held on a little longer before it too disappeared from the Ohio frontier.
Jakle, John A The American Bison and Human Occupation of the Ohio Valley. U. of Illinois
Kretch,Shepard III, Buffalo Tales: The Near-Extermination of the American Bison, Native Americans and the Land, Brown University, National Humanities Center
Shoemaker, Henry W., A Pennsylvania Bison Hunt, 1915
Van Wagener, Shellenburger, Karl, Historyof Buffalo in Pennsylvania by Watershed.
Wallace, Paul A.W. Thirty Thousand Miles with John Heckewelder: The Travels of John Heckewelder in Frontier America. Pittsburgh
Wilson, Early Trails and Surveys, Indiana Historical Society
Zeisberger, David, The History of North American Indians, 1779-1780.
