Many emigrant diaries note the sighting of buffalo. Does anyone know just how many bison actually did exist before whites penetrated the American west?
Not exactly! You have your choice of estimates. Francis Haines says there were about 40 million head occupying almost half of the North American Continent. Charles M. Robinson indicates that some estimates run as high as sixty million and E. Adamson Hoebel and Ernest Wallace report estimates of at least 100 million. [Francis Haines, The Buffalo: The Story of American Bison and Their Hunters from Prehistoric Times to the Present, p. 3] [Charles M. Robinson III, The Buffalo Hunters, p. xiii] [Ernest Wallace and E. Adamson Hoebel, The Comanches: Lords of the South Plains, p.
