Richardson, in his “Fauni-Boreali Americana,” says:  “Mr. Drummond informs me that in the retired part of the mountains, where hunters had seldom penetrated, he found no difficulty in approaching the Rocky Mountain sheep, which there exhibited the simplicity of character so remarkable in the domestic species; but that where they had been often fired at they were exceedingly wild, alarmed their companions on the approach of danger by a hissing noise, and scaled the rocks with a speed and agility that baffled pursuit.”  The mountain men of early days tell precisely the same thing of the sheep.  Fifty or sixty years ago they were regarded as the gentlest and most unsuspicious animal of all the prairie, excepting, of course, the buffalo.  They did not understand that the sound of a gun meant danger, and, when shot at, often merely jumped about and stared, acting much as in later times the elk and the mule deer acted.

We may take it for granted that, before the coming of the white man, the mountain sheep ranged over a very large portion of western America, from the Arctic Ocean down into Mexico.  Wherever the country was adapted to them, there they were found.  Absence of suitable food, and sometimes the presence of animals not agreeable to them, may have left certain areas without the sheep, but for the most part these animals no doubt existed from the eastern limit of their range clear to the Pacific.  There were sheep on the plains and in the mountains; those inhabiting the plains when alarmed sought shelter in the rough bad lands that border so many rivers, or on the tall buttes that rise from the prairies, or in the small volcanic uplifts which, in the north, stretch far out eastward from the Rocky Mountains.

While some hunters believe that the wild sheep were driven from their former habitat on the plains and in the foothills by the advent of civilized man, the opinion of the best naturalists is the reverse of this.  They believe that over the whole plains country, except in a few localities where they still remain, the sheep have been exterminated, and this is probably what has happened.  Thus Dr. C. Hart Merriam writes me: 

“I do not believe that the plains sheep have been driven to the mountains at all, but that they have been exterminated over the greater part of their former range.  In other words, that the form or sub-species inhabiting the plains (auduboni) is now extinct over the greater part of its range, occurring only in the localities mentioned by you.  The sheep of the mountains always lived there, and, in my opinion, has received no accession from the plains.  In other words, to my mind it is not a case of changed habit, but a case of extermination over large areas.  The same I believe to be true in the case of elk and many other animals.”

That this is true of the elk—­and within my own recollection—­is certainly the fact.  In the early days of my western travel, elk were reasonably abundant over the whole plains as far east as within 120 miles of the city of Omaha on the Missouri River, north to the Canadian boundary line—­and far beyond—­and south at least to the Indian Territory.  From all this great area as far west as the Rocky Mountains they have disappeared, not by any emigration to other localities, but by absolute extermination.