Large herds of bison roamed the vast Great Plains grasslands.

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado described the land in 1541:

Captain Meriwether Lewis wrote from the Dakota plains in 1804:

Estimates of bison populations ranged from 12 to 125 million. Settlement by Europeans in the mid-19th century quickly wiped them out - the last free-roaming bison was killed in 1891.