In the same volume, page 47, in a document entitled “Annals of Louisiana from 1698 to 1722, by M. Penicaut” (1698), the author records the presence of the buffalo on the Gulf coast on the banks of the Bay St. Louis, as follows:  “The next day we left Pea Island, and passed through the Little Rigolets, which led into the sea about three leagues from the Bay of St. Louis.  We encamped at the entrance of the bay, near a fountain of water that flows from the hills, and which was called at this time Belle Fountain.  We hunted during several days upon the coast of this bay, and filled our boats with the meat of the deer, buffaloes, and other wild game which we had killed, and carried it to the fort (Biloxi).”

[Note 11:  Hist.  Coll. of Louisiana and Florida, B. F. French, 1869, first series, p. 2.]

The occurrence of the buffalo at Natchez is recorded,[12] and also (p. 115) at the mouth of Red River, as follows:  “We ascended the Mississippi to Pass Manchac, where we killed fifteen buffaloes.  The next day we landed again, and killed eight more buffaloes and as many deer.”

[Note 12:  Ibid., pp. 88-91.]

The presence of the buffalo in the Delta of the Mississippi was observed and recorded by D’Iberville in 1699.[13]

[Note 13:  Hist.  Coll. of Louisiana and Florida, French, second series, p. 58.]

According to Claiborne,[14] the Choctaws have an interesting tradition in regard to the disappearance of the buffalo from Mississippi.  It relates that during the early part of the eighteenth century a great drought occurred, which was particularly severe in the prairie region.  For three years not a drop of rain fell.  The Nowubee and Tombigbee Rivers dried up and the forests perished.  The elk and buffalo, which up to that time had been numerous, all migrated to the country beyond the Mississippi, and never returned.

[Note 14:  Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, p. 484.]

Texas.—­It will be remembered that it was in southeastern Texas, in all probability within 50 miles of the present city of Houston, that the earliest discovery of the American bison on its native heath was made in 1530 by Cabeza de Vaca, a half-starved, half-naked, and wholly wretched Spaniard, almost the only surviving member of the celebrated expedition which burned its ships behind it.  In speaking of the buffalo in Texas at the earliest periods of which we have any historical record, Professor Allen says:  “They were also found in immense herds on the coast of Texas, at the Bay of St. Bernard (Matagorda Bay), and on the lower part of the Colorado (Rio Grande, according to some authorities), by La Salle, in 1685, and thence northwards across the Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity Rivers.”  Joutel says that when in latitude 28° 51’ “the sight of abundance of goats and bullocks, differing in shape from ours, and running along the coast, heightened our earnestness to be ashore.”  They afterwards landed in St. Louis Bay (now called Matagorda Bay), where they found buffaloes in such numbers on the Colorado River that they called it La Rivière aux Boeufs.[15] According to Professor Allen, the buffalo did not inhabit the coast of Texas east of the mouth of the Brazos River.