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Rh Thus buffalo traces must have influenced, to some extent, at least, the distribution of the Indian nations who were found occupying the Ohio basin when, about the middle of the eighteenth century, white men came to know it. A significant proof of this is found in the fact that no Indian nation permanently occupied the region now embraced in the state of Kentucky, to which, because of the unusual quantity of licks and meadow lands, the buffaloes were manifestly partial and where their roads are best known. Thither came all the Indian nations and here all contended in the immemorial conflict for possession of this land which they, as well as the buffalo, loved.

The buffalo, because of his sagacious selection of the most sure and most direct courses, has influenced the routes of trade and travel of the white race as much, possibly, as he influenced the course of the red-men in earlier days. There is great truth in Thomas Benton's figure when he said that the buffalo blazed the way for the railways to the Pacific. That sagacious animal undoubtedly "blazed"—with his hoofs