Jacques Marquette (right) and a "hideous...fierce...dangerous" buffalo.While delving into the dusty history of buffalo in Champaign County, I came across a journal entry written in June 1673 by Jacques Marquette, the French missionary who was canoeing down the Mississippi River with a party of explorers near the present-day Quad Cities area of western Illinois. A mostly unexplored part of the Louisiana Territory, the land that is now Illinois contained many buffalo. Marquette wrote of the buffalo, an exotic sight for a European:
"We shot one of them, and it was as much as thirteen men could do to drag him from the place where he fell. They have an enormous head, their forehead is broad and flat, and their horns, between which there is at least a foot and a half distance, are all black and much longer than our European oxen. They have a hump on the back, and their head, breast, and a part of the shoulders are covered with long hair. They have in the middle of their forehead an ugly tuft of long hair, which, falling down over their eyes, blinds them in a manner, and makes them look hideous. The rest of the body is covered with curled hair, or rather wool like our sheep, but much thicker and stronger. They shed their hair in summer, and their skin is as soft as velvet, leaving nothing but a short down. The Indians use their skins for cloaks, which they paint with figures of several colors! Their flesh and fat is excellent, and the best dish of the Indians, who kill a great many of them. They are very fierce and dangerous, and if they can hook a man with their horns, they toss him up and then tread upon him. The Indians hide themselves when they shoot at them, otherwise they would be in great danger of losing their lives. They follow them at great distances till, by loss of blood, they are unable to hurt or defend themselves. They graze upon the banks of rivers, and I have seen four hundred in a herd together."
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