The History of Bison in North America
Although it is widely believed that bison are of North American origin, they are actually native to Eurasia. To the bison, North America was just "another place to eat", and it is assumed that people pursued the large animals' lead, in addition to other successions of large animals from Siberia. At the time, there were around 80 million bison throughout North America, covering the continent from east to west and from south to north. Since the arrival of the first Europeans however, the number of bison has depleted to fewer than 1000. Bison are "grazers", feeding on grass, especially mixed grass, but also on short plain grass and tall grass prairie, the latter being prominent in Manitoba.