Providence in America, 1862

I've carried this excerpt from Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull, by Bobby Bridger, in my wallet for more than 35 years now. Whenever necessary, the mere reading of it inspires me.

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Neither the noise of the moving buffalo herds nor the immensity of them can be doubted, although it strains the imagination to consider that a single herd larger than the state of Rhode Island was observed by a 19^th century traveler on the plains. Another traveler, Nathaniel Langford, the first superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, wrote “On our trip across the Plains in 1862, after crossing the Red River of the North, bison abounded everywhere. We thought the herds of 5,000, 10,000 or more, as very large herds, until we got beyond the second crossing of the Cheyenne River. I well recall the day when we camped for the night. The sky was perfectly clear when we heard a distant rumbling sound which we thought was thunder but our guide, Pierre Boutineau, declared 'Buffalo!' And as we could yet see no sign of them, he said they were only a few miles away!

Soon we saw a cloud of dust rising in the east, and the rumbling grew louder and I think it was about half an hour when the front of the herd came fairly into view. The edge of the herd nearest to us was one-half to three-quarters of a mile away. From an observation with our field glasses, we judged the herd to be five or six (some said eight to ten) miles wide, and the herd was more than an hour passing us at a gallop. They were running as rapidly as a horse can go at a keen gallop, about 12 miles an hour...the whole space, say five by twelve miles, as far as we could see, was a seemingly solid mass. There seemed to be no space unoccupied by buffaloes.”