A little history on bison

I remember as I was looking at my book, The Life of Thomas Beard, about telling how the French explorers stopped at different places along the Illinois River including a stop at where Beardstown is now located.  

As the buffalo were sighted from their canoes, they wrote how the unusual animals would travel in the thousands and sometimes single file and sometimes as a herd.  When they traveled as a herd, they would leave a dark path of soil on which the others could then travel on.