Large herds of bison roamed the vast Great Plains grasslands.

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado described the land in 1541:

I found such a quantity of [bison] that it is impossible to number them, for while I was journeying through these plains, until I returned to where I first found them, there was not a day that I lost sight of them.

Captain Meriwether Lewis wrote from the Dakota plains in 1804:

I do not think I exaggerate, when I estimate the number of Buffaloe which could be comprehended at one view to amount to 3000.

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.