"A decade before the celebrated mountain men entered the Northern Plains and Rockies, some dozen little-known trading forays were launched into the plains of the Southwest".................."In 1808–1809, with a party of twelve hunter-traders, Mississippi planter and hardware store owner Anthony Glass acted as a semi-official emissary of President Thomas Jefferson in probing the uncharted Texas lands of the Taovaya-Wichita and Comanche Indians"....... "Alone among the early southwestern traders, Glass kept a lively journal detailing his route and experiences with the Indians, with the landforms and wildlife of the region...............A.B. Hammond Professor of Western History at the U. of Montana and author of best selling books on the ecological history of the western USA , below is Dan's Flores reveal on the wildlife described by Glass during his trek into Texas

Journal of an  Indian Trader Anthony Glass and the  Texas Trading Frontier,  1790-1810 Edited by Dan L. Flores "The Wild Horses of the early West  were descendants of Andalusian stock,  a line of animals whose ancestry can be traced to the  Barbary and Arabian hourses of  northern Africa and the Middle East".Small fleet and beautifully  proportioned, these animals were  ideally shaped by  their desert evolution to compete as  grazers with bison and pronghorn  antelope on the  prairies and plains of the southwest"..... "By 1800, they had reached a peak  population of  perhaps 2 million, most between the  Rio Grande and Arkansas rivers, the  center of their range, apparently, west-central Texas" Wolves and Pumas, the only predators of Wild Horses "The Frenchmen who traversed East  Texas in the 1680's saw no wild  horses, but the  de Leon and Teran expeditions of  1689-91 brought more than a  1000 horses and mules  to the region, at least 200 of which  were lost" The Texas Cross Timbers "Lewis & clark saw no wild horses on the Northern Plains during their 1804-1806  expedition".........""Pike however frequently sighted bands along the ARkansas River in  1806 and saw "immense herds"  in South Texas in 1807".........."Freeman and Custis,  whose 1806 expedition was stopped about a week short of the Blackland Prairies,  do not mention wild horses at all in the woods and bottoms of Arkansas and Texas" In green, historical distribution of Black Bears(note East Texas gradient on left side of map) "The Alabama-Coushattas(Indians) had been hunting  wildlife for the market since their arrival on the Red River; Sibley remarked in 1805  that one family of them had taken  118 black bears, while a single hunter had killed 400  deer in 1804 and sold the hides for 50 cents each" "Glass has his first encounter with a true prairie species;  prairie chickens, a  plump grouse of the humid, tall-grass prairies"......... .As late as 1850, there still were 500,000 of these birdes in the North Texas prairies"..... "Market hunting and habitat  alteration by agriculture extirpated them completely".... ..."No attempt was made to save them; the last flocks were seen near Marshall in  1920" Based largely on Vernon Bailey's zoological survey of  1905, the eastward range of  this species in Texas has long been fixed at about 98  degrees west"....There has  been some archaeological work, however, indicating  that the prairie dog did once range farther east"....Blackland clays would have been  good habitat"........."Glass therefore may provide us with a rare documentation  for the existence of relict  prairie dog colonies on the Blackland Prairie of the  early 19th century" "The crossings of Bois d' Arc Creek, a favorite beaver  stream of the old French  hunters, seems to be effected near Bonham"..."This  first mention of great numbers of bison and mustangs seems to refer to  the country between Bonham  and the Grayson County Line".......In his "Prehistoric  Bison Populations of North Central Texas, Mark Lynott uses archaeological  evidence to argue that bison populations were never large in the Prairie-Cross  Timbers country, primarily because the nutritional value of bluestem was less  suited to bison needs than the shorter grasses farther west, and that  whitetail deer were always the more important subsistence animal in the area" "A surround of a bison herd began when two lines  of (native) horsemen, about a mile  distant from each other, advanced on  either side of the herd and slowly brought their ends together to encircle the  animals"....."Whilst the poor affrighted animals eddying about in a crowded and confused  mass, hooking and climbing upon each other"....."In this grand turmoil, a  cloud of dust was soon raised, which  in parts obscured the throng where the hunters  were galloping their horses around and driving the whizzing arrows or their  long lances to the hearts of  these noble animals"..."In this way, the grand  hunt soon resolved itself into a desperte battle; andin the space of fifteen  minutes, resulted in the total destruction of the whole herd"

Dan Flores is A. B. Hammond Professor of Western History at the University of Montana and the general editor of the  Environmental History series at Texas A&M University Press. He is the author or co-author of seven books, including Journal of an Indian  Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Trading  Frontier, 1790-1810,published by Texas A&M Press in 1985. Flores received his Ph.D. from Texas A&;M and currently divides his time  between Missoula, Montana, and Santa Fe. "The journal is a fascinating running  account of wilderness travel,  negotiations with Indians, robberies by  the Comanches and hunting adventures.  It includes information on plants and animals, Indian culture and attitudes,  geographical features and political  relations of the natives with Spaniards  and Americans. . . . fascinating reading  and at the same time an important historical reference. It is superbly  annotated, and the editor demonstrates  a very perceptive understanding of the  importance of Indian traders in  promoting good Anglo-Indian relations.  He also documents effectively the whole  problem of Spanish-American relations  on the vague borders of the provinces of  New Mexico and Texas. This book  deserves a place in every library  concerned with the Indian trade and  frontier History." --The Museum of  the Fur Trade Quarterly