After several days of watching the odd bloated carcass float past their steamer, John James Audubon and the members of his Missouri River expedition finally, in the last days of May 1843, saw their first living American bison. And killed a bunch of them, of course.
The men’s tutor in all things buffalo — their Bos boss, so to speak — was James Illingsworth, a trader and functionary at Fort George. Illingsworth supplied Audubon not only with specimens but with some very valuable practical information, too:
When calves are caught alive, by placing your hands over the eyes and blowing into the nostrils, in the course of a few minutes they will follow the man who performs this simple operation.
I might let somebody else try that first.
