Centuries before railroads, Sharp's rifles, and Buffalo Bill Cody, buffalo roaming east of the Mississippi River wre hunted by Indians, Spanish, French, and English explorers, as well as colonists, Long Hunters, and American settlers. By the 1820s, the eastern buffalo herds were gone, and much of the wild cow's habitat had been radically altered. The Long Hunt is the first book to deal solely with the buffalo that once ranged from east of the Blue Ridge to the waters of the Mississippi.