The American Buffalo is a species of Bison. It is one of two extant species of bison, alongside the European bison. Its historical range, by 9000 BC, is described as the great bison belt, a tract of rich grassland that ran from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, east to the Atlantic Seaboard (nearly to the Atlantic tidewater in some areas) as far north as New York, south to Georgia and, according to some sources, further south to Florida, with sightings in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750. Spanning back many millennia, Native American tribes have had cultural and spiritual connections to the American bison.