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Answer: Yes, the eastern tribes did hunt a buffalo species (Bison bison pennsylvanicus - the eastern woodlands bison) which other answerers are clearly ignorant about. This was a subspecies of the North American buffalo (Bison bison bison), larger, darker and with longer, thinner horns.

This buffalo species lived in woodland areas in very small groups, grazing the underbrush instead of grass (like an elk). They were always far less numerous than Plains buffalo and consequently more difficult to find and kill. The species may have become largely extinct by 1800 - meaning that the Iroquois tribes had plenty of opportunity to hunt them throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, entirely on foot and at first using only the typical long Iroquoian bow.

The Cayuga and Onondaga languages include a memory of those long-ago woodlands buffalo - the words degriyag�« (Cayuga; a buffalo) and dege.ya'gi' (Onondaga; a buffalo).

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11y ago

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