Tour 10 Buffalo Sites in the Northern Plains, Part 1 - The Last Great Hunts

by Francie M. Berg

At the center of the Northern Plains is a rugged section of Badlands, buttes and fertile grasslands, where buffalo, cattle and sheep graze, and deer and antelope still roam.

We’d love to have you join us on the 10-site tour we’ve put together of the last great hunts and other historic and contemporary buffalo events, each clearly marked by a yellow sign.

These sites include three of the last great buffalo hunts, including the valley of the last stand—the final harvest of the last 1,200 wild buffalo by Sitting Bull and his band on October 12 and 13, 1883.

At the center of these events are previously untold stories and authentic, unspoiled places to envision where they took place.

This region, bordered by the North Dakota towns of Hettinger, Reeder and Scranton, and the South Dakota towns of Lemmon, Bison and Buffalo, is where Native people conducted the last traditional hunts of the majestic wild buffalo that once roamed here in huge herds on what was then the Great Sioux Reservation.

The Self-Guided Tour includes three of the Last Great Buffalo Hunts including the final harvest of 1,200 buffalo by the Sitting Bull band in 1883. Painting by CMRussell, Amon Carter Museum.

The history of the last buffalo hunts you’ll find here is true and documented from primary sources. Although not widely known until recently, it is told in detail by people who were there on those hunts.

They are traditional Native American hunts that somehow fell through the cracks of U.S. history.

Often showcased is the shameful history of the buffalo’s final days as a wasteful slaughter by white hide hunters.

White hide hunters slaughtered huge numbers of buffalo with powerful guns, in what was called a stand—often a single shooter hidden from sight, killing any leader who attempted to run. Illustration from Wm. Hornaday’s 1889 book “The Extermination of the American Bison.”

That happened, of course. But it is not the whole story.

Instead, the first-person recollections from these final hunts bring together a heroic saga befitting the noble beasts themselves.

It features Native Americans, who followed time-honored religious traditions in planning and preparing for each hunt, following through, caring for the meat—and never failing to give thanks for their success.

And then, just before the last wild herds disappeared forever, one Native American family returned to the hunt site to save 5 orphaned buffalo calves—and became internationally famous for nourishing their own herd.

Included on the tour are Prairie Thunder, a full-size mounted buffalo at the Dakota Buttes museum, and an authentic buffalo jump at Shadehill, S.D, used for thousands of years—long before hunters had the luxury of horses and guns. 

In no other place in the world can you find the history of all these events brought together.

Here all parts of the Buffalo story come together. From ancient times until now, when nearly every Indian Tribe in the Plains owns their own tribal buffalo herd and are delighted to share it with you.

Visitors can plan their Buffalo Trails jaunt from anywhere in the world via online connections.

So if you’re a traveler smitten by the iconic American buffalo, you can plan your next trip around buffalo sites you find here and on our website. We outline world class trips to visit buffalo-related sites, both historic and modern day.

North Dakota Tourism has added our Buffalo Trails Tour to its Best Places and pitches it with international tours. South Dakota Travel provides links as well. (This information is available in our Self-Tour Guide “Buffalo Trails in the Dakota Buttes” available at local businesses and hettingernd.com/buffalotrails.)

Site 1. Prairie Thunder—Dakota Buttes Museum

Our tour begins with a closeup of America’s New National Mammal—the magnificent bison or buffalo—in the Dakota Buttes Museum in Hettinger.

Prairie Thunder represents the last wild herds that came here in their final days, the last great traditional hunts, the miracle of how a handful of men and women, including local Native Americans, saved the buffalo from extinction, and buffalo herds that graze here today. Photo by Bonnie Smith.

Meet Prairie Thunder, our majestic full-mount buffalo—harvested in early January during a 20 below zero cold snap when his deep brown winter hair had grown to its finest thickness.

The buffalo has long captured the imagination of people everywhere, with his great size and stature, confrontational eye, beautifully-shaped black horns and semi-tragic history.

William Hornaday of the Smithsonian Museum probably described him best back in 1887:

“The magnificent dark brown frontlet and beard of the bison, the shaggy coat of hair upon the neck, hump, and shoulders, the dense coat of finer fur on the hindquarters, give the bison a grandeur and nobility of presence which are beyond all comparison amongst ruminants,” he wrote.

None, he declared, is as striking in appearance– as the male buffalo.

“The grandest of them all,” he summed it up.

Both bulls and cows are intimidating figures, but the buffalo bull is larger, tall and massive, strangely narrow in profile, with shoulders broader than his slim hips—all accented by the large shoulder hump.

His hair hangs long and heavy over the front quarters, a “thick mass of luxuriant black locks,” with even longer hair over forehead, beard, mane and chaps of the forelegs, but short and sleek over the rear and tail. Some bulls have long beards.

Typically, Prairie Thunder stands in the front exhibit hall of Dakota Buttes Museum to greet visitors.

He stands 5.5 feet high at the shoulder and is 8.5 feet from nose to tail. In life he was judged to weigh nearly 2,000 pounds. His hair varies in length from 3.5 to 5 inches. His horns span 30 inches at their widest point.

Given this area’s close connection to the last buffalo hunts along with contemporary buffalo ranching, the Hettinger community launched a two-year fundraising effort to acquire Prairie Thunder.

Donated by a local rancher, this beautifully preserved buffalo made his debut in the museum on July 4, 2010.

Prairie Thunder represents to us, not only those last wild herds and the great traditional hunts, but the miracle of how a handful of men and women, including Native Americans, saved the buffalo from near-extinction.

A major event in that rescue occurred in this area, as well, when Pete Dupree and his brothers drove a buckboard wagon to the last buffalo ranges and took home five husky, healthy calves to grow and multiply on the Great Sioux Indian Reservation.

Before long Pete Dupree counted his herd at 83 head.

This buffalo mount was created by national award-winning taxidermist Randy Holler, of Hettinger, who worked 18 months to complete the work, donating much his time and artistry to the museum project.

Visitors are asked not to touch Prairie Thunder, his coat brushed to a rich sheen, as he stands in Hettinger’s Dakota Buttes Museum. Photo by Wendy Berg

His coat is unusually rich and beautiful, and the oils from human hands can destroy his natural sheen, so we ask you please to refrain from touching Prairie Thunder.

Knowing visitors enjoy the luxurious feel of a genuine buffalo hide, the museum staff provides a separate buffalo robe nearby, which you are welcome to touch and handle. (More on the magnificent buffalo is found in Chapter 5, page 76, in “Buffalo Heartbeats Across the Plains,” the companion book to our Self-Guided Tour booklet “Buffalo Trails in the Dakota Buttes,” both available at local businesses and hettingernd.com/buffalotrails.)

Site 2. Hiddenwood Hunt—June 1882

Sites on Hettinger’s Self-Guided Tour are identified by yellow markers—Site 2 is the Hiddenwood Hunt. FM Berg.

As Running Antelope—leader of the hunt—Long Soldier and other prominent men rode out on a high point, just out of sight, they saw what they thought never to see again: thousands of buffalo grazing across valley and hills.

Thousands of buffalo grazed across Hiddenwood valley and hills in June 1882. Photo courtesy of South Dakota Tourism.

Only a few hundred yards off stood the nearest buffalo. So close they could hear him grunt and snort. With the wind in their faces, they smelled his rank odor

With the wind in their faces the hunters could smell the bull’s rank odor. Photo SDT.

They waited. It was important that all hunters start at the same time and all have an equal chance before the herd began to run.

Look off to the east in the direction of Fort Yates, to your left. This is where most of the hunters from the Great Sioux Nation were coming from, riding low and quiet up Hiddenwood Creek.

Running Antelope—leader of the hunt—Long Soldier and other prominent men rode out on a high point, just out of sight, as they waited for other hunters to join them. Painting by CMRussell, ACM.

Another group of this band rode farther north. They had not yet caught sight of what was ahead, what their scouts told them was here.

Since boyhood the older men had hunted buffalo in this place. But for the past 15 years these prime Dakota grasslands had stood empty.

White hide hunters had relentlessly pushed the buffalo farther and farther west. Now most herds were gone forever—killed off for their hides.

Then mysteriously, this very last big herd of 50,000 came back.

Miraculously, the last big herd of 50,000 buffalo returned to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in 1880. Photo SDT.

“On the wings of the wind came the news that Pte, the buffalo, had arrived to make a Sioux holiday and provide such meat as had never been furnished even by the most conscientious and liberal of beef contractors,” wrote James McLaughlin, Indian agent at the Standing Rock agency in Fort Yates, who rode along on this hunt.

The winds told tribal elders the mission of the buffalos’ return.

The buffalo returned to provide their starving Lakota brothers and sisters with desperately needed food, clothing and shelter before all were killed by the white hide hunters. That’s what the elders for told.

The large hunting party of 2,000 men, women and children left Fort Yates, 100 miles to the east, on June 10, 1882, moving slowly.

Six hundred hunters rode horseback. Others rode in horse-drawn wagons or travois pulled by horses or dogs. Many walked.

“It would hardly be possible to make a more glittering array of a body of Indians,” wrote McLaughlin in his book, My Friend the Indian. “The plains of Dakota had not for many years seen so resplendent a gathering of these people as that which moved out of Standing Rock just after dawn.”

During 10 days of travel to the famous hunting campground at Hiddenwood—where scouts assured them they’d find buffalo, the hunting party paused for traditional religious ceremonials and prayers for a successful hunt.

You are standing on a historic spot. This is where “The Last Great Buffalo Hunt” began on or about June 20, 1882, in this broad fertile valley near Hiddenwood Cliff.

Let’s imagine this valley as it was on that delightful June morning in 1882, filled with an immense herd of buffalo. The big animals grazed peacefully on both sides of Hiddenwood Creek and off into the distance, spread out over the broad valley and hills.

Buffalo cows nuzzled and nursed their young calves. Tawny-colored calves frisked and played together.

Massive bulls stood down by Hiddenwood Creek in the mud, drinking, pawing and splashing. Some tore into the yellow clay of Hiddenwood Cliff with huge shaggy heads, throwing up dust and rubbing their rough winter pelts.

To the right, up a draw, big bulls rubbed themselves in a buffalo wallow. Awaiting their turn, several squared off, whacking heads and horns, grunting and pawing up the ground.

Planning their approach to the herd before them, Running Antelope and others gestured and talked in whispers, as they waited for the others to come up on the high point. All gasped as they rode up and glimpsed the valley below and the hills on either side filled with buffalo.

Quietly, feverishly, they spread out along the flanks. These were people with buffalo hunting running in their veins and in their hearts.

Since childhood they heard stories of courage on the hunt, deeds of strength and endurance against great bulls, of buffalo mystique and legend. They lived in buffalo hide tepees, slept under soft buffalo robes, ran through cactus in tough hide moccasins, delighted in eating pemmican and dried buffalo meat.

Older Lakota men had hunted here before. This was an ancient campground for buffalo-hunting plains tribes. For hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years the cliff and creek winding below it were known as Hiddenwood (Pha Can Nahma)—because the trees could not be seen from a distance. Tepee rings filled this valley when first settlers arrived.

Tepee rings filled Hiddenwood Valley when the first settlers arrived. Painting by CMRussell, ACM.

The horses felt the excitement too, lifted their heads, snorted, pranced and reared.

Running Antelope glanced back at the hunters lined up just below the crest of the bluffs and across the creek on the far slope. Every eye was on him, all ready to go.

He lifted his arm and drove it forward in a forceful gesture.

And–they were off!

The hunters charged at full speed, dashing among the buffalo as they attacked from the hills on both sides of Hiddenwood Creek.

Wolves slashing viciously at the throat of the old lone bull turned suddenly and streaked out of range over the ridge, looking back as they ran. A few antelope, grazing on the flat, leapt up a side hill and turned to stare curiously, their sharp eyes alert.

Rifles cracked and buffalo fell. Some began to run. Riders with fast horses raced ahead, cut in close to turn the leaders and dropped them with a bullet or two.

The buffalo turned in confusion, confronting their attackers with furious thrusts and slashes of massive heads and horns. They grunted, bellowed and flung their short, stubby tails over their backs.

Each hunter rode close alongside his buffalo and shot it in the heart or lungs—just ahead of the front leg. Usually the animal fell with one shot. No bullets wasted. He made sure it was dead and raced ahead for another shot.

Buffalo on distant slopes merely looked up and returned to grazing.

Most of the men carried repeating rifles, breechloaders—which fed bullets from the rear rather than the front of the barrel, allowing faster reloading.

Not all the Indians could afford guns. Some older men and boys, in their poverty, used only bow and arrows.

A few others had no guns because McLaughlin did not trust them enough to allow weapons. Many of these same hunters had fought against Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, only a few years earlier.

Wolf Necklace, an old man of about 60, was one hunter without fire power. He carried only bow and arrows, rode an old gray pony and followed a buffalo whose side he had pierced with four or five protruding arrows. As his pony walked slowly alongside, he now and then shot another arrow, but without the arm power needed to bury them deeply.

A friend rode up with a pistol and offered to help.

“No. Don’t shoot!” cried Wolf Necklace. “The arrows will work in and he will die.” 

He was right. After a few minutes the big animal fell dead. Wolf Necklace had killed it with no help from anyone.

The hunters rode their best horses, swift runners—older seasoned “buffalo horses” if possible. Men with younger horses worried that, though fast, they might fail to perform in close quarters alongside these strange, pungent-smelling beasts that they’d never encountered before.

Indeed, from the first charge, plunging, rearing horses could be seen through the valley as riders struggled to gain control.

It was a long and successful day. There was no rest. The hunters kept up the slaughter until they lost their horses or were exhausted.

Not a few ended the chase on foot. No attempt at butchering was made that first day.

Women cooked humps and other tender morsels and fed the hunters who returned to camp long after dark. All were too tired that night for celebrating or storytelling.

On the second day the people butchered and cared for the meat.

All knew their tasks. The men skinned, quartered the animals and hauled the meat in to the new camp by travois, pack horse and wagon.

Women began the formidable task of slicing chunks of meat into thin sheets for drying. These sheets they hung on willow racks to dry in the sun.

When cured, they’d make and store the meat as pemmican and jerky. They stretched the hides and staked them on the ground to dry. As summer hides lacking prime winter hair, they’d be used for rawhide and tanned leather—without hair, for clothing, moccasins, tepee covers and many other uses.

That evening after the day of butchering everyone feasted. It was a feast such as had not been held for many years.

There was dancing, singing and storytelling. Great orators and chiefs like Gall, John Grass, Crow King, Rain-in-the-Face, and Spotted Horn Bull recounted tales of courage, fortitude and tragedy in hunting and battle.

McLaughlin said, “The head men of the Sioux Nation were on that hunt and at peace on the banks of Hiddenwood Creek that night.”

On the third day the hunters ran buffalo again a few miles farther west. The herd had not moved far. That day they killed 3,000.

Then they made camp at several places on water, butchered and hung the meat to dry in the hot sun. McLaughlin said they had killed many and yet showed restraint.

“I never have known an Indian to kill a game animal that he did not need,” he wrote. “And I have known few white hunters to stop while there was game to kill.”

It was McLaughlin who called this the “last great hunt” in his memoirs, written years later.

Today this historic site marks the Hiddenwood Hunt, named for Hiddenwood Cliff across the green valley, at upper right in this photo. Image by Kathy Walsh

While it wasn’t quite the last hunt of the huge wild herds—that happened about a year later—it was indisputably the largest of the last hunts, both in number of people involved and size of the harvest.

Two thousand Native Dakota Sioux in traditional dress came on the Hiddenwood hunt and in two days they killed 5,000 buffalo, relying on ancient religious ceremony and tradition throughout. (For more details see Chapter 1. The Great Hiddenwood Hunt, page 10, in the companion book “Buffalo Heartbeats across the Plains,”)

In June 1882, 2,000 Dakota Sioux travelled 100 miles from Fort Yates to the Hiddenwood Hunt, and in two days killed 5,000 buffalo. Colored area on the North and South Dakota map shows where this last hunt occurred. Photo by FM Berg.

This valley at Hiddenwood Cliff was also where General George Custer and his 7th Cavalry soldiers made camp on July 8, 1874 on their journey to the Black Hills from Ft. Abraham Lincoln at Bismarck—a few years before this last great buffalo hunt took place.

Site 3. Sitting Bull Hunt—Buffalo’s Last Stand

Take a deep breath of the fresh, clean air! Stretch, look around and let your imagination flow!

Site 3, The Buffalo’s Last Stand—the Sitting Bull hunt finished off the last big herd. Vic Smith, well-known hide hunter said, “There was not a hoof left. That wound up the buffalo in the Far West, only a stray bull being seen here and there afterwards.” FM Berg.

Stop on the high point and hold your breath for a stunning view. A spectacular panorama suddenly opens out ahead and you can see for miles in every direction.

This is where the American buffalo made their last stand—in this remote and beautiful valley and others like it within perhaps 30 or 40 miles.

This breathtaking vista looks today much as it did 140 years ago when the last buffalo returned here “to provide for the sons and daughters of the Lakota…” The air is light and clear, outlining each butte. Photo by Kendra Rosencrans.

In the distance you see long ridges stretching across the horizon from west to east in waves, each wave is a long divide of peaks, plateaus and flat-topped buttes splashed with shades of violet, lavender and blue. Each successive wave takes on a paler shade as it recedes into the background.

This breathtaking vista looks today much as it did when the last buffalo returned here after an absence of 15 years “to provide for the sons and daughters of the Lakota…” in the words of Indian Agent James McLaughlin.

The air is light and clear, outlining each butte, however distant. A reporter riding through here with Custer the next day after camping at Hiddenwood judged he could see “no less than” 40 miles.

“The well-defined, sharpened lines projected on the sky by rolling prairies and distant buttes is marvelous beyond expression, and can never be appreciated unless actually seen. The outlines seem cut in relief upon the very face of the heavens,” he wrote.

But that reporter saw no buffalo—because all had retreated farther west when he rode through in 1874.

Amazingly, in a few years, this last big herd of buffalo returned, and they survived here for nearly three years. 

Maybe we can visualize that too. Hundreds and thousands of buffalo streaming into this valley from the west, led by determined matriarchs in large and small scattered herds.

Some herds would have turned off from the larger migration upon finding a draw or buttes to their liking. They spread out and began to fill in the entire vista as far as we can see.

The southern herd was long gone by this time—from Kansas, Colorado and Texas—mainly they disappeared by 1875 from heavy hunting.

The last remnant of the great northern herd had migrated to the Miles City area of southeastern Montana and then split at the Yellowstone River. Half crossed the river and went north into the waiting rifles of hundreds of hunters, both white and Indian.

Most were annihilated within the year.

This other half—an estimated 50,000, the last of the last great wild herds—came east into this remote part of Dakota Territory, then called the Great Sioux Reservation, now part of Perkins County, South Dakota.

For the buffalo it was a land of relative safety for a time, forbidden to white hide hunters.

The area is rimmed with buttes. The reporter riding with Custer wrote of them:

“The view is fine indeed. . . Buttes . . . of all shapes—conical, sugar-loafed, pinnacled, dome-topped and flat-topped, and all girdled by belts of as varying and blended colors as the strata of white, black, blue, brown and red clays and sandstone of their naked sides”

The rivers here flow east to the Missouri River. Ahead, just out of sight runs the North Grand River, separated from the South Grand by a high divide, and still farther south by the ridges and divides of the forks of the Moreau River, their peaks rising into the distance.

Closer in, the peaks, cutbanks, rugged cliffs, wooded draws, gullies and eroded, rock-crested buttes cut through prairie grasslands. Green in spring and early summer, curing to a nutritious golden brown by fall.

A variety of plants grows here. Nutritious, high-protein grasses—buffalo grass, blue gramma, native wheat grass.

Prairie flowers bloom and wave in the wind—tall golden sunflowers, fragrant sage, yucca, wild mustard, pink coneflowers and prickly pear cactus lush with large and delicate lemon-yellow blooms, and Indian turnips highly prized by Native women who dug them in these hills to balance their diet high in wild meat.

 A golden eagle nests atop a high rocky outcropping. Grouse and wild turkeys rustle through long grass. The liquid melody of the meadowlark floats on the air, along with songs of the horned lark and lark bunting and other prairie birds that nest on the ground.

A jackrabbit springs by on powerful legs and a mule deer grazes out in the open with twin fawns, while a whitetail doe hides in a wooded draw. Antelope run up a side hill.

We call this the Butchering Site because of the many buffalo bones found here. The leg bones we’ve found are chopped in half to remove the marrow, in the ancient Indian manner. They still show up in sandy banks after a hard rain or snow runoff.

Powerful buffalo leg bones found here have been chopped in half to remove the marrow, in the ancient manner. They still show up in sandy banks after snow runoff. FM Berg.

Off to the left, trees mark springs on a side hill where hunting parties left evidence of their camps.

Native men deftly skinned the carcasses, cut and loaded meat onto pack horses for hauling in to camp, leaving skulls and some of the larger bones where they fell.

Women sliced meat thin and hung it in sheets on willow frames to dry in the sun. The hides they stretched and staked out on the ground near their tepees.

Above, soaring hawks and turkey buzzards took note.

Like the Hiddenwood site, many ancient hunts took place here, probably for thousands of years, as well as these final ones between 1880 and 1883.

Many ancient hunts took place at “The Last Stand,” probably for thousands of years. It’s been called the Butchering Site, because of the many buffalo bones and skulls found. CM Russell, ACM.

The rich heritage of nomadic tribes hunting these grasslands left behind tepee rings, arrowheads, tools and beads, as well as buffalo bones. Petroglyphs are found on a peak in the distance at left center.

Famous Indian chiefs lived and hunted here in these badlands and grasslands—Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, John Grass and Rain-in-the-Face—were all here. Early day explorers and trappers came too—Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger and General George A. Custer with the 7th Cavalry.

We can imagine herds of buffalo grazing here and there into the distance, while in the foreground a successful Indian hunting party butchers and cares for their meat.

If you see black or red Angus cattle in this pasture it’s easy to imagine them as buffalo from long ago.

At a distance, buffalo show up as more wedge-like in silhouette than cattle. High at the hump with large hanging head, their elevated forequarters sloping down to small narrow rears.

In contrast, distant cattle appear squared off, as boxlike rectangles. Horses look more rounded in their hips.

Listen—and you might hear Indian drumming on a stray breeze.

Not much is known of the buffalo hunts during those last three years, other than the two hunts documented by the missionary Rev. Thomas Riggs and Indian Agent James McLaughlin, and William Hornaday’s comments on the final Sitting Bull hunt. Only a few other hunts were briefly mentioned in newspapers and in McLaughlin’s letters.

We know these last 10,000 buffalo were set upon by numerous Native hunts during that time, both large and small. Legions of white hide hunters lurked at the reservation borders making illegal forays inside when they dared.

For nearly three years the buffalo stayed here, dwindling—yet thousands remained—until finished off the fall of 1883 by the Sitting Bull Hunt. 

Many thousands of Native Americans were ensconced here on the Great Sioux Reservation. McLaughlin reported that his agency alone had charge of nearly 6,000 people, and there were a number of other agencies on this vast reservation that included most of the western half of South Dakota.

With a great many hungry people, we might wonder how the buffalo lasted so long—even in these rugged badlands.

Why were they not quickly hunted to extinction, as elsewhere?

The answer probably lies in what hunting was allowed, rather than lack of desire to hunt them.

Indian Agent James McLaughlin, who was assigned to the agency at Ft Yates and arrived the end of 1881 ran a tight ship. Determined to stay in control, he did not necessarily grant permission to Lakota hunters who wanted to pursue buffalo here, a hundred miles away from where they lived.

Punishment for disobeying an agent’s rules could be severe, including cutting family food rations.

For the Sioux Indian people assigned to live here this was an especially difficult and painful time.

A nomadic, independent people with the knowledge and skills for survival in an unforgiving land, they traditionally cared for themselves and their families with no help from anyone. Now, without buffalo, they could no longer care for their families or travel freely.

Only a few years earlier, these same Sioux bands had fought and won the Battle of the Little Big Horn, along with their allies the Northern Cheyenne.

They paid a heavy price for that victory, assigned to specific agencies of their reservation.

Almost immediately after that victory, their large reservation was reduced in size. They lost their beloved Black Hills and a western strip of land equivalent to the width of one county—from 104 to 103 degrees of latitude.

Federal policy in Washington, DC, decreed that Natives should build log cabins, take up farming and replace their spiritual traditions, cultural values, religion, language and even life ways with those of mainstream America.

Promised food rations often came up short as thieves and dishonest agents sold much of their intended food and blankets. Unfamiliar diseases hit, such as smallpox and measles, sometimes fatally for whole Indian families with no natural immunity to them.

Many children were sent to far-off boarding schools in New England—Connecticut and New Hampshire, even for years—to learn the ways of white people. Some children died there. Most were terrified and miserable in a strange land.

The great Lakota horse herds and guns were gone.

During those three years, it seems the Lakota people needed to request not only a hunting permit from McLaughlin, but sometimes ammunition and guns.

Fortunately, families were allowed one or two horses for farming and perhaps a rifle, as they were expected to produce food for themselves.

And yet—these valleys suddenly teemed with buffalo. For many years the Native people had known what it was like to live without them. Now the knowledge of buffalo grazing across these native pastures must have brought great joy to their hearts. Their beloved buffalo had returned when so desperately needed.

McLaughlin felt sympathetic to the plight of his charges. Newly arrived at Ft. Yates in September 1881, he spoke Sioux as learned from his wife, a Minnesota Sioux, and his long tenure at the Devils Lake Reservation.

Yet he enforced rigid and often unworkable decisions made in Washington. There was great fear there and among western settlers of a Sioux uprising. McLaughlin was determined that would not happen.

The Great Sioux Reservation was still very large during this window of time. Between 1876 and 1889 it extended approximately 130 miles wide by 230 miles north and south. The Indian agencies were connected within the reservation. However, the Lakota people were assigned to specific agencies and required the agent’s permission to travel between them.

Indian tribes from other reservations, too, petitioned their agents for permission to come here hunting buffalo.

In the spring of 1883, a poignant letter appeared in the Bismarck Tribune, signed by 10 Mandan and Gros Ventre Chiefs living at Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota, telling of their deep longing to hunt the buffalo that had come “so near.”

“We want go out hunt buffaloes, is 60 miles from Ft. Berthold, which so near,” they wrote. ”We want go out so bad get some to eat and agent tells us we cannot go. He says if we go out guns and ponies, wagons be take away from us—this is what he tells us. . . We are working hard here.

“We have agent here, but he do not help us. He helps his folks—that’s all help we get from him. When he talk to us people here he talk like he was very kind to think of us Indians here. We often ask him to more eat and he tells us he is going to get plenty eat for us but we get tired waiting. Been three years. . . .

“He is trying to make people live half sick hungry. They got to get some to eat—they cannot.”

 As far as is known this Ft. Berthold hunt was not permitted. Most certainly McLaughlin disapproved of allowing outside tribes to come onto the Sioux reservation to hunt buffalo. His letters make this clear.

During that last summer in 1883 there remained 10,000 buffalo in these final herds. They still ranged in this area—the northwestern corner of the reservation, said to be about half way between Bismarck and the Black Hills, between Hiddenwood Creek and the Moreau River. But their numbers dwindled swiftly toward fall.

“Just at this juncture,” reported Hornaday, “Sitting Bull and his whole band of nearly 1,000 braves arrived, and in two days’ time slaughtered the entire herd,”

Thus the Sitting Bull hunt that began around Oct 12, 1883, and slaughtered 1,200 buffalo was actually the very “last great hunt.” Sitting Bull and his band came from the Mobridge area about 60 to 70 miles nearly due east of here and apparently found that last herd about 10 or 15 miles to the south.

Hornaday quotes Vic Smith, a well-known hide hunter, “There was not a hoof left. That wound up the buffalo in the Far West, only a stray bull being seen here and there afterwards.”

(For more details see Ch 4, Scattered Survivors, page 56, in the companion book “Buffalo Heartbeats Across the Plains.”)

Grand River National Grassland

If you are wondering who owns this land, you need not look far. You and I own it, along with all other Americans!

This is what we call a Government Pasture, part of the Grand River and Cedar River National Grasslands administered by the U.S. Forest Service, USDA.

It’s officially under the multiple use concept that includes cattle grazing and public recreation.

This is a great place to hike and explore the rocky crests of hills and brushy draws and get closer to wildlife. Hiking here is especially exhilarating in early morning. Breathe in the fresh light air, smell the sage and wild prairie flowers, listen to the meadowlark and keep an eye out for mule deer.

Local ranchers lease these grasslands for cattle and through their Grand River Grazing Association care for the land, conserve soil, fence and improve grasslands and water sources.

If you don’t see cattle in this pasture, they are probably being rotated to another pasture. Regulations call for rotation between pastures every two or three weeks for best conservation of native grasses.

Site 4. Winter Hunt in the Slim Buttes

Find a scenic place where you might enjoy viewing buffalo in these pine hills—or joining the hunt, if you imagine you were riding with the Dupree hunting band and Thomas Riggs, missionary to the Lakota Sioux. Their hunting trip lasted months, so most any place you choose in and near the Buttes re-creates that hunt—they must have covered every draw and coulee.

Sites 4a and 4b denote the two passes through the Slim Buttes—to the northeast and south—where the Dupree hunting party spent 3 months in cold and deep snow in the pine hills. They prepared for 3 weeks and soon ran out of food—except for abundant buffalo meat. FM Berg.

Let your imagination wander. It’s wintertime with deep snow in the pines . . .

The winter winds blow cold, but excitement rides high among the 56 Lakota hunters riding with you. They just glimpsed their first buffalo in 15 years. Up ahead five or six big wooly stragglers plow through deep snow and vanished over the rocky slope above.

Two scouts, riding ahead and off to the side, hastily wave the hunters out of sight, motioning for them to swing wide and come on the buffalo against the wind.

Fearing their prey will escape while they circle, the men hurry their horses through heavy snow. All ride silently.

No one can see out of the ravine. Some lash their horses into a frenzy, using heel and quirt.

Rugged buttes and cutbanks punctuate the Slim Buttes landscape. Imagine riding horseback while pursuing buffalo through these broken lands—covered in two or three feet of blowing snow. Photo by Carole Rosencrans.

One impatient hunter grew angry at the delay. He glowered and signaled that the scouts were directing them too far around. He whipped up his horse to cut across the draw.

Suddenly a cloud of snow shot up. The man and his horse disappeared into a deep washout hole. He came up fighting to break free of the wildly plunging horse, legs and hooves kicking.

No one went to help him. After much effort he dragged his horse out and joined the hunters again, quietly cleaning snow from his gun.

“He’s cooled off now!” Roan Bear whispered loudly to Thomas Riggs, riding beside him.

As they jumped their horses out of the ravine, a small herd of buffalo snorted and stared at them, startled. In an instant they broke into a lumbering gallop, flinging up their stumpy tails as they ran.

 Suddenly all vanished over a cutbank as if swallowed by the earth.

 In a flash the riders charged after them—and dropped out of sight as quickly as did their game.

 Swept along by a mad rush of hard-whipping riders, Riggs reached the edge of the bluff and—too late—saw the chaos below.

The Dupree hunters covered some rough country during their successful three-month hunt. Not always was it easy to pack the meat back to camp. Painting CM Russell, ACM.

At the bottom 20 horses were down, sprawled across a wide sheet of ice. Their riders scrambled to recover and hang onto their mounts.

Hunters race after the fleeing buffalo—their carcasses littered the white snow. Painting by Thomas Miles Richardson Jr 1848, AMC.

Across the creek, other horses raced after the fleeing buffalo. The lead hunters began to shoot. So did reckless hunters behind them, much to the disgust of those in the front. They turned and shouted angrily as bullets whizzed by their ears.

Buffalo fell. The black humps of their carcasses littered the white snow.

It was the day before Christmas, noted Thomas Riggs, the young missionary invited to join the Lakota hunters. The only white man on the hunt, Riggs—himself the son of a missionary to the Sioux—spoke their language and was eager to learn the Lakota customs and religious ceremony involved in hunting big game.

The hunters had gathered at the ranch of Fred and Mary Ann Dupris (also pronounced Dupree), on the Cheyenne River at the mouth of Cherry Creek, 35 miles west of the Missouri River.

A French-Canadian fur trader, Fred had built a log trading post and also ran a herd of 200 beef cattle. He and his wife Mary Ann, a Minnicoujou Lakota, raised eleven children and built an active community of their own. As each son and daughter married, they moved into a growing row of cabins built of cottonwood logs on a beautiful wooded flat.

Mary Ann offered to share their family tent with Riggs for the hunt, in which he joined Clearance Ward—his assistant at the mission, her son-in-law known in the tribe as Roan Bear—and many of her children and grandchildren. Fred, an older man in his 70s, opted to stay home by the warm fire.

After that first day’s hunt, the men most often went out in smaller groups following scattered herds of buffalo.

They made their way back to camp loaded with an abundance of meat and robes. Fires crackled and snapped, pots boiled and people ate well of the tasty buffalo meat. All were smiling and happy.

But it was hard work for everyone. The high, rough lands of the Slim Buttes were cut by deep washouts along canyons and dry creek beds. Deep, crusted snow and frequent blizzard conditions added to the difficulties. Snow fell almost continuously. The women worked with skill and efficiency to care for enormous amounts of meat and hides.

They set up their tents and tepees in a protected amphitheater on the southwest corner of the Slim Buttes where they turned the horses loose to graze. Two or three feet of snow covered the rich, cured grasses, but the savvy Indian horses pawed off the snow to eat their fill.

It was hardly a winter to spend in the rugged Slim Buttes living in tepees—where cold winds howl through the pine trees and snow settles deep in rocky canyons.

Nevertheless, the Cheyenne River Lakota stuck it out for three months, even though they had planned for only three weeks. They ran out of provisions and survived on little more than buffalo meat the last few weeks.

Riggs praised his horse Sam, an old hand at running buffalo, besides being very fast.

“Every man in camp knew him, for he was the horse that Canptaye had on the Little Big Horn against Custer in ’76. He was a professional and deserved the honor the Indians gave him.”

Riggs carried a sack of oats to feed his horses.          

Plans were discussed and decisions made in the “soldier lodge” or council tent, the heart of the camp, a place of much smoking the pipe, religious ceremony and feasting. Later the crier announced their decisions throughout the camp. No women were allowed to enter the council tent, but they brought food and set it outside.

Two young men were selected as scouts, given detailed instructions and sworn into service. They made silent pledges, each with hands placed palm down flat on the earth.

At one point Riggs tells of an immense herd of buffalo arriving in the Slim Buttes from the southwest, stampeding into the night. This might have been part of the major migration coming in a direct line 150 miles from Miles City.

The Native hunters followed their game onto the grassy plains north of the Slim Buttes as well as deep in the Pine trees. Amon Carter Museum.

Riggs and five other hunters were returning to a temporary camp through deep snow, nearly exhausted, their pack horses loaded with meat.

In the darkness of that moonless night without stars, Cokan-tanka, a hunter who was a Sitting Bull lieutenant in the Custer battle, charged recklessly into the herd. His first shot missed and he suddenly found himself in the midst of a tight, galloping herd.

The buffalo ran against him on all sides, bumping against his legs. He shot again and missed again, using all the shells in the magazine. With great care he finally pulled a cartridge from the back of his belt and pushed it into the chamber.

While the mass of buffalo still pushed against him, he finally worked his way out of the running herd and shot his buffalo.

Another time, Roan Bear shot a buffalo that fell as if dead. He dropped off his horse to bleed it, but it suddenly leaped to its feet. He jumped back on his horse, which began bucking. The buffalo charged and finally the horse ran. Roan Bear turned, fired behind him and luckily, the buffalo dropped dead.

One night 40 men camped without food about 25 miles from the Slim Buttes. One hunter shot an old bull. They cooked the meat and ate the entire buffalo that evening.

They had only one large tent that barely held 32 men, so they made a partial tent from two pieces of canvas wagon sheet to cover the remaining eight men. It stretched no more than eight feet in diameter. In the partial tent, where Riggs slept, they roasted meat and boiled coffee in a three-quart pail.

All in all, despite the crowding, it was a pleasant evening, filled with much joking and laughter.

When finally the Slim Buttes winter hunt ended it was judged a success. No one was injured. The party killed around 2,000 buffalo. They took home more meat than the horses could pack and 500 prime buffalo hides. 

Today the rugged Slim Buttes are a lovely place to hike, picnic and camp in the pine trees on a pleasant summer day. SDT.

Evenings the hunters sat around warm campfires in the tents, telling stories of the day’s hunt.

One night Riggs had a story of his own to tell. He had killed an enormous buffalo that afternoon, he said. After skinning it, he threw the green hide over his horse and sat on it. The hide instantly froze stiff as marble.

“In passing through a deep drift, I was lifted clear off my horse, which passed out from under me and left me straddling the frozen hide on top of nothing.”

His audience hooted with laughter. The amusing story of how he rode a frozen hide as a saddle with no horse under it was told over and over by his fellow hunters to hearty laughter, he wrote in his book “Sunset to Sunset.”

Riggs spent many evenings around the campfire talking about their experiences with the Dupree brothers and sisters. Likely they also talked of what they all knew was coming—the day when the buffalo herds would be gone forever.

Pete, one of the older brothers, became famous as one of a small handful of people who saved the buffalo from extinction.

It was his Lakota mother Mary Ann who suggested it, say descendants—and perhaps that happened right here. The Duprees ran a sizeable herd of beef cattle on the reservation. Surely some of those cows could be coaxed to raise a buffalo calf.

The idea took hold.

In early summer Pete Dupree—along with some of his brothers and probably sisters, too—set out for these buffalo ranges with a wagon. (See Site 5, Saving Five Calves)

They returned with five strong young buffalo calves—and helped change history. (For more information see Chapter 2, Winter Hunt in Slim Buttes, page 26, from the companion book “Buffalo Heartbeats across the Plains.”)

If you come to love the Slim Buttes—as local people do—and want to explore more of this long narrow formation of higher-altitude buttes, covered with pine trees and rocks, turn southeast and drive to the top of the South Pass.

Again we can imagine the Lakota hunting buffalo here in the pines and the mountainous pastures.

Buffalo are adapted to survive the worst blizzards of Northern Plains, from the natural insulation of their dense hair to their great strength and bulk.

The greatest challenges to range animals are the fierce storms of blowing and drifting snow. They often drift with the storm into water holes and other disasters.

Not buffalo. In winter, they face into the harsh blizzards that sometimes hit the northern plains, protected by their massive heads and shoulders. Their hair grows so dense that every square inch has 10 times as many hairs as an inch of cow hide, says Dale F. Lott, a University of California biologist.

With their forequarters well insulated by their heaviest hair growth, they move slowly into the wind until the storm blows over.

If snow lies deep on the prairie, buffalo plow down to eat grass. Their humps contain muscles supported by vertebrae that allow them to swing their massive, low-hanging heads side to side, sweeping away snow to reach plants and grass.

When water is frozen, they eat snow.

Originally published September 8, 2020 on Buffalo Tales and Trails

Legacy of White Buffalo - Big Medicine

by Francie M. Berg

Big Medicine, born in 1933 on the National Bison Range in Western Montana, near the Flathead Indian Reservation, lived there all of his 26 years. He had a brown topknot between his horns, his eyes were blue and his horns and hooves were light colored. National Bison Range photo.

The most famous white buffalo that ever lived was probably Big Medicine, born in 1933 on the National Bison Range in Western Montana.

Soon after birth he was dubbed “Big Medicine” by the local Salish, Pend d’Oreille and Kootenai people of the Flathead Valley. He lived there all of his 26 years.

White buffalo are sacred to many Native American tribes and they believed he brought good news and supernatural powers. The Blackfeet tribe farther east also considered him the property of the sun as well as “good medicine.”

“The National Bison Range,” said Paul G. Redington, then chief of the Bureau of Biological Survey, “is maintained to assist in perpetuating the American buffalo. We are therefore much interested in having in the herd an example of a variation so rare as the white buffalo. When only one was known in a herd of more than five million, it is particularly interesting that we should have this big medicine in a herd of about 500 animals.”

Big Medicine posed for Tourist Photos

The buffalo expert, California biology professor Dale Lott, author of American Bison: A Natural History, was born in Montana on the National Bison Range in 1933, the same year as Big Medicine.

He grew up among the buffalo on the bison range, where his grandfather was the Range Superintendent and veterinarian.

In his book he mentions that, growing up, he often had his photo taken by visitors with his grandfather and the white buffalo who was nicknamed “Old Whitey” by park employees.

His father lived and worked there and married the boss’s daughter.

Later his parents bought his father’s home ranch only three miles away, so all through his growing up years “the bison herds were visible as dark patches on distant hills,” according to memories he recorded in his book.

By age ten, Lott recalls that Big Medicine was occasionally turned out in the larger pasture, and contended in battle with other big herd bulls for a time.

Big Medicine spent most of his life in a rather small pasture with a few cows, where he could be easily seen by visitors, and was said to be the most popular tourist stop in Montana after Yellowstone Park.

However, he was soon returned to the smaller pasture with a few cows, which was less stressful for him.

Not a true albino, Big Medicine’s eyes were blue and a thick knot of brown hair grew between his horns.

Nevertheless, it was quite clear that his herd had the true albino genetics.

Alaskan buffalo herd birthed White calves

In 1928, before Big Medicine was born, it was decided to start a new federal herd of Plains buffalo in Alaska to replace the Wood buffalo which had become extinct there.

Twenty-three buffalo cows and bulls from Big Medicine’s home on the National Bison Range were transplanted to Delta Junction, Alaska, to start a new free-roaming herd.

Some in the new Alaskan herd must have carried the same genetics for albinism that Big Medicine did when born five years later—because rare white calves began showing up in that herd.

But since it was rugged and remote forested country, mostly without roads, it was difficult to follow-up on them. Living in thriving wild herds in spectacular mountain country often in snow, the rare white calves in Alaska were difficult to check up on or see from the air.

Also, they lived among large predators such as packs of wolves, fierce grizzly bears and mountain lions—so they were extremely vulnerable. About half of calves did not survive their first yar.

The first Alaskan white calf was born in 1939 and another the next year. They were seen together several times, but then disappeared. In 1949 a white calf was killed by a truck on the road.

In all, 12 white buffalo calves were sighted in the half-wild Alaskan herds over the next 50 years, according to David Dary, author of The Buffalo Book. One had a brown top knot on his head, as did Big Medicine.

Apparently, none survived as long as age three.

Many of the calves seen were recorded only through brief sightings from an airplane.

Game wardens tried to capture the last calf, sighted in the fall of 1973, planning to keep it for special care in a smaller enclosure or zoo. But it disappeared and was not seen again.

Alaskan wildlife officials say no white buffalo were sighted for the next 44 years among the 500 Plains buffalo living in the 90,000-acre Delta Bison Sanctuary.

However, the genetics that can result in white hair probably still exist in the bison herd, Bob Schmidt, of Alaska Fish and Game, told me in 2016. They just needed the right combination of genetics for it to happen.

“If both parents had the recessive gene there would be a 25 percent chance that their offspring would be white,” he said.

White calf born in Alaska herd in 2017

Apparently it happened. Amazingly, the very next year on May 9, 2017 another white calf was spotted in a remote area of the Farewell Bison Herd near McGrath in Alaska.

A white calf born in the Farewell Bison Herd near McGrath, Alaska, in the spring of 2017, is photographed by Josh Peirce and his wife Kellie from the air. He sighted the calf several times in June from an airplane, judging it healthy and estimating its age at three months. But, unfortunately it was not seen again and was believed to be the victim of wolves. Photo by Kellie Peirce.

Josh Peirce is the Alaska Wildlife Biologist with the State Fish and Game based in the McGrath community.

By this time the Delta herd had been split into four herds of plains bison in Alaska, all of them descended from the 23 head shipped from Big Medicine’s home on the National Bison Range in Montana in 1928.

Peirce says the unfenced home range for the bison covers about 500 square miles and has no roads, only an airstrip where planes can land.

“It’s fair to say the herd is at a record high now,” Peirce reported. “There are 395 adults, 115 calves, a total of 510 animals.”

Peirce’s job includes getting a count of the buffalo each year and making plans for the annual spring and fall hunts of excess animals.

The Farewell area is about 225 miles northwest of Anchorage on the Kuskokwim River and 60 miles southeast of McGrath, in the foothills of high rugged mountains,

Peirce says the white calf was seen as early as May 9 and he saw it several times in June, and estimated its age at about 3 months. It appeared to be in good health, he said, was able to keep up with the herd and seemed to have good eyesight.

The Alaskan buffalo herd is always on the move, often covering 20 to 30 miles a day, so it would be difficult to follow one small white calf, especially in deep snow in winter from the air.

However, this latest calf apparently didn’t make it until snow fell in the fall.

Peirce says the little white calf was not seen again. He believes it—like so many other buffalo calves, as well as baby moose—fell to some of the many large predators hunting in the area, likely a pack of wolves.

Only 40 to 60%—or half—of all buffalo and moose calves survive their first year, he said.

If they make it through their first summer—they still risk the extreme cold and threat of starvation in wintertime—which take a toll of very young and very old animals.

The Alaskan buffalo are not fed or watered, summer or winter.

Peirce suspects the missing white calf is leucistic—not a full albino.

In the photos he and his wife Kellie shot, the calf appears to have a dark ring around its eyes and a light brown “cap” on its head, he said.

Alaska Fish & Wildllife News, in announcing the rare birth in Aug 2017, describes two genetic variations: Albinism and Leucism.

“Albinism and leucism are both conditions that can cause an animal to have white fur, hair, skin or feathers. Both are caused by a reduction of pigments at the cellular level, and are usually genetic, according to the article.

“Leucism can affect an entire animal, or just patches (animals with partial leucism are referred to as “pied” or “piebald”) and a leucistic animal will have normal-looking eyes. Animals with albinism have pink eyes.”

Rarity of White Genetics

“Albinism is the complete absence of tissue pigment. Albino can just happen—it doesn’t have to be genetic,” says Schmidt. There are many types of albinism, all of which involve lack of the pigment in varying degrees that gives color to the skin, hair and eyes.

Albinism and its related conditions are often associated with eye problems and more susceptibility to sunburn and skin cancers.

“As a general rule, albino animals have low survival rates,” he says.

“White buffalo . . . don’t seem to do well,” agrees Lott. “Far from going forth and multiplying, they dwindle and disappear.”

He says white can be a good winter color for animals such as rabbits that turn white in winter to blend with snowy background, thus making them safer from wolf attack.

“But probably not for buffalo calves. . . . the answer [to their poor survival rates] probably lies in winter.

White Cloud, mother and grandmother of two white calves and a pure albino, lived most of her 20 years in a small buffalo herd at the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, North Dakota. Her coat brushed to a beautiful sheen, she is now on exhibit at the museum there. Jamestown Sun.

“The normal dark coat may be a lifesaver in winter. Bison seldom if ever die of heat, but they often die of cold…Bison evolved in really terrible winters; and even now, especially severe winters kill many of the old and the young.”

Another rare genetic condition causes a buffalo to be born white, but to turn brown within a year or two as it matures.

Finally, a “white buffalo” may actually prove to be what is now called a beefalo—a cross between buffalo and white cattle, such as Charolais.

Don’t be fooled by this in a tourist trap, warns author Steven Rinella in his book American Buffalo: In search of a lost icon.

Rinella says that many so-called “sacred white buffalo . . . a fixure of Western tourist traps, are the result of crossbreeding between buffalo and white breeds of cattle.”

All the plains buffalo in Alaska’s four herds are descendants of the 23 animals obtained from the National Bison Range in Montana before any cattle genes were introduced into the herd.

So Alaska bison are among the relatively small number of genetically pure bison. Any of them might have the genetics of Big Medicine.

Native Excitement brings Welcome

Wherever a white buffalo calf appears, Native people come to welcome it, to celebrate and honor its birth.

They regard a little white buffalo calf as good news, a sign of peace and harmony—and of good times to come. They affirm it symbolizes spiritual renewal and the hope of bringing people of all backgrounds closer together.

As a calf—and later—Big Medicine was welcomed and honored by Native Americans as a highly spiritual animal—a sign of peace and harmony, and of good times to come. Montana Historical Society.

“A white buffalo is the most sacred living thing you could ever encounter,” according to John Lame Deer, a Lakota spiritual leader.

They give thanks, with perhaps a smoky smudge of lighted sweet grass and songs to the beating of a drum.

Elders ensure the proper ceremonials and rituals are followed in showing respect to this highly spiritual animal.

“It will bring about purity of mind, body and spirit, and unify all nations—black, red yellow and white,” says Floyd Hand Looks For Buffalo, an Oglala Medicine Man from Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Some cultures see the white buffalo as a manifestation of the White Buffalo Calf Maiden, long revered as a prophet.

Often visitors leave gifts of tobacco, colored scarves and dream-catchers at the site.

White Buffalo Lore

Historically many Indian tribes considered the white buffalo and a white buffalo robe to have special powers.

Whenever spotted in a wild herd, a white buffalo was the most likely to be killed. It was said they were so highly desired that few lived more than a few years.

William Hornaday in his Smithsonian review reported in 1887 that he had “met many old buffalo hunters, who had killed thousands and seen scores of thousands of buffalo, yet never had seen a white one.”

“Albino buffaloes were always so highly prized that not a single one, so far as I can learn, ever had the good fortune to attain adult size, their appearance being so striking, in contrast with the other members of the herd, as to cause their speedy destruction,” he wrote.

“From all accounts it appears that not over 10 or 11 white buffaloes, or white buffalo skins, were ever seen by white men. Pied individuals [with various spotted patterns] were occasionally obtained, but they too were and are rare.”

In the old days, a set religious ceremony attended the skinning and tanning of a white robe.

A white robe brought great honor to its owner and he kept it in a special place of honor in the tepee, a possession beyond price. If willing to sell or trade or give away, he might cut it in pieces—even a small piece was a “sacred article,” worth a horse or more in trade.

Blind, deaf calf is born

In 1937, Big Medicine sired a full albino bull calf, with pink eyes and white hooves, born to his own mother. Unfortunately, the calf was both deaf and blind.

At the age of 6 months, this calf was sent to the National Zoological Gardens at Washington, DC, upon request. He lived there in the National Zoo on public display several years—perhaps as long as 12 years, according to one report.

Lott said his grandfather “with the directness of the stockman and veterinarian that he was . . . intended to try for more … but the bureaucrats above him—wisely, I think—decreed that the US Fish and Wildlife Service was not in the business of producing freaks of nature.”

That blind buffalo died from what ranchers commonly call “hardware disease”—a length of baling wire lodged in his stomach from the hay he ate. Or he died from an infected cut on his leg. Lott said when his family asked about the cause of death, they were given both answers by staff at the National Zoo in Washington.

Popular Montana tourist stop

In his prime, Big Medicine weighed more than 1,900 pounds, rose 6 feet tall at the hump, and measured almost 12 feet from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.

There he became, it was said, the second most popular tourist stop in Montana, after Yellowstone Park.

Out on the bigger range by age ten, he contended in battle with other big bulls for a time before returning to the smaller pasture. He became a herd bull, and sired numerous offspring.

On the range a bison’s natural life span is about 15 to 20 years, with their teeth becoming greatly worn with use.

For this reason, Big Medicine spent much of his maturity in the Bison Range’s smaller display pasture.

He was often seen standing on a clay knob overlooking his group of buffalo cows.

Big Medicine died at age 26, was mounted and is now exhibited at the Montana Historical Society museum in Helena.

Big Medicine died on August 25, 1959 at the age of 26, old for a bison bull.

At that time, he weighed only 1,193 pounds. His hide was in poor condition due to his advanced age.

He was mounted in a full body stance and now stands in exhibition at the Montana Historical Society museum in Helena.

Originally published August 25, 2020 on Buffalo Tales and Trails

The Sad Demise of Sir Donald

by Francie M. Berg

For many years Sir Donald reigned as the dominant bull in the exhibition buffalo herd at Banff National Park in Canada.

Banff holds the distinction of being not only Canada’s first national park but also the location of its first conservation herd of bison.

The Banff buffalo herd arrived in 1897, with the first gift of three from T. G. Blackstock, a Toronto lawyer, originating with the Goodnight herd of Texas.

Later 16 Canadian Plains buffalo were donated by Sir Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona, including the bull who became known as Sir Donald, after his donor. Smith was famous in Canada for helping build the Trans-Canada Railway.

By 1899, there were 30 buffalo in the small Banff pasture, all doing well, along with captive elk, moose, deer, goats and Bighorn sheep.

The Banff buffalo herd grazed in a 300-acre paddock. Since it was a small enclosure, and the herd increasing in size, they were fed hay and supplements as needed.

In 1907 Canada purchased the Pablo Buffalo Herd from the western plains of Montana. Banff received 77 of these animals, and a new paddock of 300 acres was built north of the railroad to hold the increasing herd.

Sir Donald was a handsome bull. It was said he represented well the ideal that Native hunters preferred—a bull with well-built forequarters and large head.

Featured on many postcards, Sir Donald’s photo was mailed around the world by tourists who visited the popular new park at Banff.

A familiar sight for tourists, Sir Donald was featured on many picture postcards.

According to one news report, “He answered best to the Indians’ description of the buffalo, being short and very thick and deep in the body, with an extremely massive head. . . And he was undoubtedly a really pure-bred bison.”

Another well-known buffalo in the herd was Highland Mary, an early daughter of Sir Donald’s. A smaller “bright-colored” buffalo, she was also recognizable and known to visitors.

Grand specimen of the breed that he was, when fully-grown Sir Donald’s head measured 49 inches from tip to tip of his horns, and 15½ inches between the eye sockets across the forehead, according to reports.

His horns were 18½ inches long, with a girth around of 14½ inches.

Sir Donald’s Origins

Known as the “Last Wild Buffalo in Captivity,” the famous Sir Donald was rescued from the wild in a Métis buffalo hunt by James “Tonka Jim” McKay and friends of Winnipeg, Canada.

Tonka Jim McKay rescued the calf later known as Sir Donald, reportedly from a Métis hunt in the Battleford area of Saskatchewan in 1872.

Reportedly, he came from the Battleford area of Saskatchewan around 1872.

McKay, a Métis interpreter at the Numbered Treaties and hunting guide, began rescuing young calves because of his concern that each time he joined the semi-annual Métis hunt there were fewer and fewer buffalo on the Canadian Plains. He did not want them to die out.

Although one report has it that Sir Donald was rescued as a 2-year-old bull on the western plains of Canada, it’s much more likely—as in other reports—that he was captured as a young calf.

That was McKay’s normal style— to save young calves in a hunt—as with the others of his growing herd. At his home ranch near Winnipeg, he “mothered up” the calves with dairy cows until they bonded.

Capturing and taming a nearly full-grown buffalo might sound easy to those who hadn’t tried it, but was extremely difficult to accomplish successfully. Older bison when roped often fought viciously. Many simply lay down and died.

By contrast, young calves certainly required careful attention to nutrition—they needed rich milk and quickly—but when handled carefully, and coaxed with a willing milk cow, they tended to bond well with their nursing mothers.

McKay’s style was to capture young calves during a Métis hunt, then “mother up” the calves with gentle cows until they bonded at his home ranch near Winnipeg. Photo by Chris Hull.

When Tonka Jim McKay died in 1879 his herd of 13 buffalo were auctioned off at a well-attended sale. They were purchased by Samuel Bedson, warden of the Stony Mountain Federal Penitentiary near Winnipeg for $1,000.

Since he was short of money, Bedson borrowed part of it on that day from Sir Donald Smith, also known as Lord Strathcona.

Near the prison Bedson had built a pen for his bison herd. Locals called this enclosure “the Castle,” and its owner, “King of the Castle.”

As a side note: One of Bedson’s new cows gave birth just after the auction and the newly-enlarged herd of 14 was driven by cowboys to their new home at the penitentiary.

They escaped in the night, were rounded up and returned to their new home.

It was recorded that the little newborn calf kept up with the herd for the entire journey—a total of 63 miles in 36 hours—averaging nearly two miles per hour.

Originating in the western Plains of Canada, the little tyke was hailed as being of hardy Canadian stock!

The herd was kept at the Penitentiary near Winnipeg, soon growing to the unmanageable size of 118 head. Some were given to Sir Donald Smith as pay back for Bedson’s initial debt.

In turn, Sir Donald Smith donated some of these—including the bull later named for him—to the display herd at Banff.

The man with the long white beard is Lord Strathcona, Sir Donald Smith. He is here depicted driving in the last spike of the Trans-Canada Railway, in perhaps one of the most famous photographs of Canadian history. Sir Donald Smith helped stitch the country of Canada together with the railway, but beyond his industrial actions, he had an interesting role to play in the early history of bison conservation. Photo taken 7 November, 1885 at Craigellachie, B.C. Archives Canada.

The large bull known as Sir Donald became the dominant bull in the popular herd near the visitors’ Center at Banff.

“A grand specimen of the breed” Sir Donald measured about 49 inches from tip to tip of the horns, and 15½ inches between the eye sockets across the forehead. “The remaining horn is 18 ½ inches long and its girth is 14½ inches. Short and very thick and deep in the body, with an extremely massive head in front. . . undoubtedly a really pure-bred bison.”

As the most powerful bull in the herd, Sir Donald fought many bulls over the years to establish and defend his place at the top of the hierarchy.

End of Sir Donald’s Reign

The fight that finally took Sir Donald down at age 33 was described in a news story as “a terrific battle for supremacy between him and a young bull of almost equal size imported from Texas.

“The fight began early in the morning, the great heads lowered and little red eyes glaring, tearing up the turf with their hooves, and with tails straight up in the air. With the crash like colliding engines they met over and over again.

“Several mounted men endeavored to separate the infuriated animals, but were themselves charged and put to flight.

“Sir Donald at last lost his left horn in one of the shocks, at the same time getting a blow in the left eye which destroyed its sight.

“After being thrown on his back and pummeled while down by his victorious challenger, he gave up the struggle and retired from the gaze of the watching herd to begin his lonely wanderings.

“Since that time he has seldom been seen with the rest, preferring to wander and wallow alone in some favorite sand hole.”

A Retirement of Lonely Wanderings

Sir Donald’s lonely wanderings lasted 5 years during which the herd largely ignored him.

Although still in one of the small paddocks, he stayed some distance from the herd.

As he began to feel his age, the Commissioner of Canadian parks Howard Douglas, of Banff, announced that this last of the known buffalo survivors of the immense herds which used to roam the plains of the Canadian west, “Sir Donald . . . will within a few weeks be put to death, and later mounted” in full-size to be placed in a museum.

On March 12, 1909, The Wainwright Star at Wainwright, Alberta, reported:

“This veteran bull still grazes with the ancient bulls of the herd at Banff, but he has long since been driven out from the main body by the younger bulls.

“Lately he has shown such signs of age that the authorities have decided to end his career, not only out of mercy to himself, but to keep his hide and fur intact for exhibition purposes.

“Sir Donald is the only living buffalo in captivity who ever roamed the prairies of Canada with the aboriginal herds.

“He was captured in 1872, as a calf, by the late Hon. James Mackay, who was a noted figure in the early history of Manitoba and the Canadian west.

“Mr. Mackay was collecting a herd for his private ranch, and captured the calf amongst a dozen others. The herd was kept at Silver Heights, near Winnipeg, for a number of years, and later transferred to Warden Bedson of the Stoney Mountain penitentiary, with whom Lord Strathcona had considerable interest in the preservation of the buffalo.

“Sir Donald Smith on the division of the herd, presented this bull with 12 other buffalo, to the dominion government and they were sent to the national park at Banff, where they became the nucleus of the present herd of about a hundred animals.”

About a month before his death, the Commissioner Howard Douglas had gone out with a local taxidermist to the paddocks to inspect him.

But at that point, the old bull seemed quite lively. In fact, Sir Donald charged vigorously at his distinguished visitors, They escaped outside the fence.

This seemed to indicate plenty of reserve strength in his body, despite the fact he had lost his left eye and left horn in his last desperate fight.

So again Sir Donald was allowed to wander away from the herd—which was in a rather small pasture.

Then came news of his death.

The cowboy in charge of the paddocks saw Sir Donald walking around at five o’clock on a Monday afternoon, and on looking for him next morning saw that he was down and apparently dead.

He covered the carcass with tarps to keep it safe from the prowling wolves and coyotes.

Steps were taken at once to return the taxidermist Ashley Hine to the paddock.

Trampled and Gored to Death

Then a number of the park workmen came with a large sleigh to move the body to the Sign of the Goat taxidermy shop.

But it was too late. The herd had returned, were attacking the carcass, and could only be driven away with great difficulty by the buffalo handlers.

Each bull seemed determined to make one last goring of the remains with his horns.

There was nothing left of the body but a mass of jellied flesh, hair and blood. Only the head and four legs were recognizable.

One newspaper headlined the story: “Old Sir Donald, the Patriarch of the American Bison, Trampled and Gored to Death in Corral at Banff.”

“Many thousands of visitors to Banff, the delightful resort in the middle of the Canadian National park, had seen and admired the grand old buffalo bull, Sir Donald, who had been the leader and chief of his herd for upwards of 38 years.

“But never again will the grand head and massive proportions of this animal, the only really wild bison in captivity, be viewed in their natural environment, for during the early hours of Tuesday morning, April 6 (1909), old Sir Donald came to his final end.

“He was found lying dead out in one of the paddocks, having apparently stumbled over some bogs, probably owing to his being blind in one eye, and while unable to rise he was surrounded by the rest of the herd.

“Alas, for respect among the bison some of the younger bulls took the opportunity to help him onto the happy hunting grounds by goring the huge beast with their short and sharp horns.

“Not content with this, the herd pawed and butted at the prostrate monarch till, except on the head and the legs, there was no hair left.”

Photographers attempted to shoot pictures of him “as he lay in his last sleep,” while trying to keep away from the most aggressive buffalo.

As the workmen with the sleigh tried to load what was left of the carcass, the herd kept closing in, forming a compact half circle around them.

The horses pulling the sleigh got very alarmed, and only expert action on the part of drivers prevented a runaway.

“Highland Mary, a small bright colored cow buffalo, a very early daughter of the dead bull, was the most aggressive, coming within 12 or 15 feet of the workers. But as she was nearly as old as Sir Donald, she was treated with the respect she deserved.”

It took several hours to get the hide off, which was in some places 2 inches thick.

Finally the workmen finished and got the remains loaded onto the sleigh, with the head hung from the back, for the trip back to town. Most of the men took a short cut over the fence for home.

But here the herd again took a hand.

As the sleigh came closer the buffalo charged up to it, crowding each other to get near the head hanging from the back.

“Three times the driver of the team fell over obstacles before he reached the gates, having to keep his eyes on his frantic horses and on the bellowing herd behind him.

“His companion proceeded to open the gate, and for a few moments it looked as if the whole herd would escape into the adjoining paddock.”

Luckily the two men were able to chase back the buffalo that got out and close the gate.

“The head of Sir Donald is now in the hands of the government taxidermist, and will eventually adorn the walls of the museum in Banff.”

Reflecting on the attack

In summing up, how are we to regard the violent and vicious attack of the young bulls against their former chief?

What do we tell the children?

The buffalo herd’s treatment of a former leader sounds harsh, but it is a part of nature, which as we know, can turn savage and ruthless.

Stark beauty of Lake Moraine near Banff. Even in the midst of stunning beauty, nature can be cruel and harsh, unforgiving of weakness.

And how can we deny, as we read history of the world—even at its most “civilized”—the examples of once-powerful human rulers cut down at the end of their reign in violent and vengeful ways—even by their own sons or nephews just as Sir Donald was?

Those of us today who live in peaceful democracies can be grateful that our former leaders generally are treated with dignity and respect.

Whether we agreed with them or not in their power, once deposed we retire them in peace and allow them to hold onto self-respect with their gilded libraries, autobiographies and memoirs, their speeches and harmless hobbies of painting and riding their gentle, old horses.

We don’t stomp on them, tear them to shreds—imagine! Even though some cruel dictatorships seem almost to ask for it and indeed it is literally the way they end.

It’s exactly how these blood-thirsty young buffalo bulls finished off their erstwhile leader Sir Donald at age 38! Fortunately, he first had 5 years of peaceful, if lonely, retirement when he was allowed to wander off alone!

But a peaceful end was not in the cards with Sir Donald’s vengeful heirs waiting in the wings in their small paddock.

They followed him down in the bog, unable to rise. In his humiliation, he had only one working eye and one horn for defense. And they attacked, knowing he had lost all power over them.

Instead of the full-body-mount and honor his handlers had planned for Sir Donald, only his head was left intact—with a missing horn.

His massive head was mounted and hung in the office of the Park Commissioner—presumably with two glass eyes and one remodeled horn.

Orignally published August 11, 2020 on Buffalo Tales and Trails

American Serengeti - Let’s Take Another Look Part 2

by Francie M. Berg

Interview with Marko Manoukian, Phillips County Extension Agent, Malta, Montana.

In our BLOG of June 23, 2020, we published “American Serengeti—What is going on in Montana?,” which discusses the enormous wildlife project that is shaking the foundations of community development and progress in Phillips County, Montana, and Malta, its county seat, and nearby communities.

The American Prairie Reserve—APR, or simply the Prairie Reserve–on the upper Missouri River is a plan to develop a huge grazing unit—the largest nature reserve in the continental United States.

American Prairie Reserve buffalo graze along Telegraph Creek on Sun Prairie. Photo by APR, Dennis Lingohr.

On this land APR aims to turn back the clock and restore the wildlife that roamed here two centuries ago, along with its large predators—grizzly bears, packs of wolves, mountain lions—and great herds of wild buffalo.

The idea grew from casual roots when this Montana area was “discovered” in 2000 by a group of environmentalists who proclaimed it critical for preserving grassland biodiversity.

One year later, in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, a member of that group, a biologist named Curt Freese, teamed up with a Montana native named Sean Gerrity and together they formed the American Prairie Reserve (APR).

Gerrity, a Silicon Valley consultant, says the idea was to “move fast and be nimble,” in the manner of high-tech start-ups.

They would remove the thousands of cattle grazing public land, stock it with 10,000 buffalo, tear out divider fences, restore native vegetation, and add missing wildlife in a pristine natural setting. This would be much appreciated by their wealthy donors from all over the world who could visit occasionally, staying in opulent yurts.

In the 19 years since, the Prairie Reserve group has moved ahead, raising $160 million in private donations, nearly all of it from out-of-state high-tech and business entrepreneurs across the U.S. and Europe.

They have acquired 30 properties—cattle ranches—totaling 104,000 acres. To this they added about three times that—more than 300,000 acres—in grazing leases on adjacent federal and state land—as owners are allowed when they purchase land with grazing rights.

Plans are to purchase about 20 more ranches.

In this American Prairie map of the proposed area, blue areas depict lands purchased and leased by the American Prairie Reserve in the last 19 years. The plan is to connect these with Federal lands, including the Charlie Russell National Wildlife Refuge (dark green) and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument (light green) and other state and federal and perhaps Indian lands (brown). APR Map.

The properties purchased are all strategically located near two federally protected areas: the 1.1 million-acre Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the 377,000-acre Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, according to National Geographic (Feb.2020, p69-89), which partners with Prairie Reserve in the Last Wild Places initiative. Other Federal and State lands intersect as well. Most of these lands are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a division of the Department of Interior (DOT).

Other environmentalists, such as The Nature Conservancy, have long purchased lands for conservation, but none have done it in the large-scale APR proposes, according to National Geographic. Few have had the ambition as the Prairie Reserve does, of retaining long-term ownership and management authority of that land as well as adjoining publicly-owned lands.

Needless to say, cattle ranchers and many local townspeople—who have been watching the inevitable disintegration of formerly close communities, as one rancher after another sells out to APR, and families and businesses leave—are not pleased with what is happening.

We invited Marko Manoukian, Phillips County Extension Agent, of Malta, Montana, representing the Philllips County Livestock Association, to give us the cattle ranchers side of this Montana controversy.

Below is our interview with Marko Manoukian.

Marko Manoukian, Phillips County Extension Agent, of Malta, Montana, surveys the irrigation system in his county. He represents the Philllips County Livestock Association in presenting the cattle ranchers side of Montana controversy over APR. Photo submitted by M Manoukian.

Francie Berg: What is the American Prairie Reserve (APR) doing that upsets the local ranchers so much?

Marko Manoukian: Principally, they are crowding out the ability of ranchers to compete economically for agricultural land—in this case grazing land.

Because APR pays a premium for the property—more than a neighboring rancher could pay off with cows—this doesn’t allow for young people to come back and be engaged in livestock production.

Francie: Do you disagree with APR’s statement that they pay the regular, going price for land?

Marko: Correct, principally because, they are a 501C3 charitable organization so they get tax-free dollars to compete.

The tax code under charity is reserved for those things related to health or education. APR getting that designation is far outside the scope of the tax code.

But they got it somehow.

Francie: So they have already got from the BLM what they want?

Marko: Well, competition for the land is one issue.

Malta is losing its population of 2,000, say ranchers. They worry that each ranch APR acquires is one lost to the community, draining taxes from the county treasury, children from schools, and business from stores. Photo by maltachamber.com.

Another issue is that they’ve made application to BLM for year-around grazing and to alter the fence perimeter.

Neighboring ranchers or permitees are required to make application through the BLM and have been denied those things.

Francie: Denied what?

Marko: Year-around grazing and fence altercation. There’s supposed to be an environment assessment made by the BLM to be approved before any fences are changed.

None of that has happened—and I suppose in Phillips County alone they’ve probably altered 100 miles of BLM perimeter fence already.

Some neighboring operators are angry because now the fences are electric and that’s a hazard for them and their cattle.

Francie: Why is that a hazard?

Marko: Well as a neighboring rancher, yes it is. Because you’re not in charge of energizing the fence. They are.

So if your cow somehow got across the fence you might not know how to turn the fence off to get to the other side.

This would be the same for recreation, crawling around hunting—hunters may not know how to turn the fence off or even know that it is electric before they get zapped.

Francie:  You’re saying electric fences are a problem for recreation?

Marko: Yes. Electric fences are a limitation to recreation.

Francie: The BLM land is supposed to be open for recreation, isn’t it?

Hand Lettered sign objects to federal decisions overriding local input. Photo by Shawn Regan.

Marko: Correct. That’s not multiple use. We’ve argued that electric fence is not multiple use.

Francie: So you think the BLM is treating the cattle ranchers unfairly.

Marko: Yes, they are.

Francie:  And what course do the ranchers have?

Marko: Two actions that ranchers have taken.

BLM has said we’re going to change the allotment from cattle to bison. And the ranchers have objected to that. One is to object to change grazing from cattle to bison.

Francie: Can they just change it without consulting anyone?

Marko: True. Well they haven’t changed it yet. But early on the neighboring permitees could see that there is favoritism going on. So they’ve challenged everything that BLM has done.

Francie: You’ve done this in a legal way?

Marko: Yep. We’ve hired an attorney to review and represent us in that process.

I think there are 5 allotments now. Originally it was 18 allotments that they wanted to change to year-around grazing and bison grazing only. But now they have requested permits for just 5 allotments.

Francie: The ranchers are challenging this?

Marko: Yep.

Francie: What will happen next?

Marko: Eventually BLM will provide a document suggesting the best management alternatives they see under that request. So we’re just waiting for that environmental assessment document to come forward. Or they can deny the request all together.

Francie: So they can deny APR s request—or your request?

Marko: Yes, either of them.

So then the other action the livestock operators have taken. The citizens of the county have passed an ordinance that bison must be handled like livestock.

The citizens have said all bison have to be managed like cattle. This means owners have to do disease testing and some identification of their animals.

Signs in Malta oppose bison ranging free. “What APR really wants is a takeover of Federal land and control of how it’s managed,” says Deanna Robbins, a rancher in Roy.

But APR has asked for a variance from that ordinance So we’re working through that process.

Francie: I also noticed—BLM is saying that the bison are fine with just 1 single fence around the outside. In our area BLM is telling the ranchers they have to build inner dividing fences and rotate their cattle quite frequently.

Marko: Yes, all BLM pemitees are required to rotate their animals on BLM Land.

It’s the biggest change that BLM has taken on over the course of its existence. And now they want to go back to one giant pasture and keep the same animals in there all year around.

Francie: I read that the APR goal is to get 10,000 bison in their one large, single pasture. Do you think 10,000 would be fully stocked for that amount of land?

Marko: Yes, that’s more than a full load.

Francie: So won’t they graze it down even faster if they do it without rotation?

Marko: Yes, that’s our claim.

Francie: Montana is a big producer of cattle, right? So if this happens to that big chunk of grazing land, it will cut Montana’s beef production. Any speculation on this?

Marko: Oh, Yes. APR is planning on taking productive land and turning it into no production. That hurts our economy. Both regional and local economy are impacted. Also they are impacted because the APR operations aren’t buying fuel, fertilizer, net wrap and tires.

Francie: And it seems kind of deceptive that these people are outsiders from Silicon Valley, but making a case that they are Montanans, even placing their so-called national headquarters in Bozeman.

Marko: That’s their story, yes. Well some of them are, I guess.

Francie: What about the luxury yurts they are advertising for their donors? Are they available for use by everyone?

Marko: Well, it does appear that the preserve is used mostly by the upper class. Some of their packages are priced at $2,500 occupancy per person—that doesn’t include their traveling to get here.

Yurts on the plains may look as simple as granaries. But according to photos in Prairie Reserve’s advertising material the luxury is all inside. They are draped in opulent hangings and furnished with exotic items for lavish living in the manner of Arab tents awaiting Lawrence of Arabia. David Grubbs, Billings Gazette.

Francie: What about local people? Do they have a lower price for ordinary people to stay overnight?

Marko: I don’t know if they advertise a local or lower price.

Francie: They say they don’t charge people to come onto their lands. Is it free to come into their refuges?

Marko: They don’t have any legal authority to regulate how people enter the BLM land, which is the majority of their holdings. I’m suspicious that on their deeded land—some people may be charged and some not.

Francie: Right now do they only run bison on their purchased land, not BLM lands?

Marko: I believe they do have 1 BLM permit licensed for bison, but no other bison as yet on BLM land.

Francie: Sounds as if they are trying to totally change the livestock from cattle to bison. I also heard a complaint that this will give APR long-term power about how the bison pastures are handled.

Marko: I don’t know that they’re going to have a lot of repeat customers to come out to the prairie. We haven’t had rain on the prairie for most of the summer. So the grasshoppers are horrible.

I know there are going to be ranchers who have to adjust the livestock they have on BLM land.

Francie: So how are they going to adjust the bison numbers in a dry year if they already have too many head? If there are too many grasshoppers and too little moisture—have they planned for that?

Marko: No they don’t plan for those kinds of environmental impacts.

Like in 2010 and 2011 we had 100 inches of snow. APR didn’t have any hay. The buffalo broke out. Left their property, traveled a long ways, and had to be brought back by helicopter.

Francie: Why did they break out?

Marko: The buffalo broke out because they were hungry! 

Hopefully long-term BLM will stick to the rules.

Francie: Do you have a good case?

Marko: I think we do. And hopefully the rules of management of our public land will hold. Congress hasn’t overturned the Taylor Grazing Act. So if they stick to the rules, they’ll have to make application and not be allowed to run free-range.

Francie: So they won’t be able to just run freely under 1 big fence. You’re saying that most of the cattle ranchers agree on this?

Marko: Yes—they would be against changing the rules.

Francie: Doesn’t APR plan to link all this land with just 1 perimeter fence around it?

Marko: That’s their theory. But they’re pretty well spread across our county and across the river and they’re not necessarily connected.

DOI Presents 10-year Plan for Bison

Geese fly over a semi truck emblazoned with a banner promoting private land ownership in Lewistown on Thursday, Jan. 24. Across the street the American Prairie Reserve was holding a public conference for agricultural producers on Living with Wildlife. Photo Bret French, Billings Gazette.

Francie: It’s interesting, the “Save the Cowboy” signs we see around your county and other counties close by. I think their point is quite clear—a lot of local people don’t like what they are seeing.

However, I see that the Department of the Interior (DOI) of which BLM and the government grazing lands are a part, has a new 10-year plan concerning Bison.

That powerful department—DOI which governs one eighth of the land mass of the United States—recently announced their commitment to establish and maintain large, wide-ranging bison herds on “appropriate large landscapes.” 

Their 10-year plan, called the Bison Conservation Initiative, is a new cooperative program that will coordinate conservation strategies and approaches for the wild American Bison over the next 10 years. They mention working with tribal herds in North and South Dakota.

What do you think of that, Marko?

Marko: In Interior’s press release I don’t see any mention of tribes in Montana, so hard to say what impact this will have in other states.

With the smallest cow herds in the US at least since 1950 one would wonder why the US government would help tribes remove more cattle. But if the tribes want to do that just on tribal lands that would be ok, of course.

Francie: Right, both the projects mentioned in the press release are quite limited, and have to do with increasing tribal buffalo herds and genetics of the Theodore Roosevelt Park herd.

On the other hand—when we look at DOI’s 10-year goals organized around five central themes,

it sounds as if they might have wider plans than that.

Here are DOI’s announced 10-year goals:

1.Wild, Healthy Bison Herds: A commitment to conserve bison as healthy wildlife

2.Genetic Conservation: A commitment to an interagency, science-based approach to support genetic diversity across DOI bison conservation herds

3.Shared Stewardship: A commitment to shared stewardship of wild bison in cooperation with states, tribes and other stakeholders

4.Ecological Restoration: A commitment to establish and maintain large, wide-ranging bison herds on appropriate large landscapes where their role as ecosystem engineers shape healthy and diverse ecological communities

5.Cultural Restoration: A commitment to restore cultural connections to honor and promote the unique status of bison as an American icon for all people (Department of Interior Press Release 5/7/2020)

“Ecological Restoration and establishing and maintaining large, wide-ranging bison herds” sounds eerily like what the Prairie Reserve is trying to do.

Yet if that commitment is to be tempered by the “Shared Stewardship,” pledge to cooperate with “states, tribes and other stakeholders,” surely DOI will not participate in deliberate breaking up of close communities against the desires of local residents.

When there is a strong cultural backlash from 100-year residents—as there is from Malta and the Phillips County cattle ranchers—certainly that needs to be considered.

DOI and BLM when acting locally will surely recognize heavy-handedness when they participate in it.

If they think they can override local protests, the “Save the Cowboy” signs make the issues clear. Montana ranchers are making them plain with both lawyers and hand-made signs.

A pair of horses on Lewistown’s Main Street helped spread a message of support for cowboys and opposition to the American Prairie Reserve during the Living With Wildlife Conference last winter, for which the APR was a co-sponsor. Photo by Danica Rutten.

It seems that DOI and BLM need to back off and recognize that the arrogance of these environmental outsiders does not sit well with Montanans.

Their heavy-handedness can in no way be called “Shared Stewardship” with “states and other stakeholders” even when they can “move fast and be nimble,” in the words of Sean Gerrity.

Indeed, maybe 10,000 sometimes-hungry buffalo under one single electric-fenced pasture is not such a lofty goal, after all.

Right DOI? And if you’ve been thinking so, please tell us why.

What gives them—and you—the right to destroy living communities?

Maybe it only proves the arrogance and pig-headedness of those who have “discovered” this little gem of 100 years of shared conservation efforts at such a late date?

For more on how DOI is working “to improve the conservation and management of bison,” contact Interior_Press@ios.doi.gov)

Originally published October 18, 2020 at Buffalo Tales and Trails

American Serengeti - What Is Going On in Montana? Part 1

by Francie M. Berg

In northcentral Montana an enormous wildlife project is taking shape in a bold new way that is shaking the foundations of community development and progress—to bring about what has been called the American Seringetti.

Blue areas depict lands purchased and leased by the American Prairie Reserve in the last 19 years. The APR plan is to connect them with Federal lands including the Charlie Russell National Wildlife Refuge (dark green) and the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument (light green) and other state and federal and perhaps Indian lands. APR Map.

The American Prairie Reserve—APR, or simply the Prairie Reserve–on the upper Missouri River is an ambitious plan to develop just such a place as that vast and unspoiled Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, which still experiences the last of the world’s great wildlife migrations.

This Prairie Reserve would be the largest nature reserve in the continental United States. It aims to turn back the clock and restore the wildlife that roamed here two centuries ago. All the large predators: grizzly bears, packs of wolves, mountain lions will be here—along with great herds of wild buffalo.

This Montana area was discovered in 2000 by a group of environmentalists who proclaimed it critical for preserving grassland biodiversity.

 “One of the largest intact landscapes in the Great Plains,” they said. “A top priority” and “pristine grasslands.”

 One year later, a member of that group, a biologist named Curt Freese, teamed up with a Montana native named Sean Gerrity and together they formed the American Prairie Reserve (APR). Gerrity, a former Silicon Valley consultant, says the idea was to “move fast and be nimble,” in the manner of high-tech start-ups.

 They would remove the hundreds of thousands of cattle grazing the land, stock it with 10,000 buffalo, tear out divider fences, restore native vegetation, and create conditions whereby the missing wildlife would return and thrive in a natural setting.

Buffalo on the Move

The American Prairie Reserve plan is to replace cattle on their land purchases—and adjoining lands—with 10,000 free-roaming buffalo. Painting by CM Russell.

 They began raising private donations with the goal of bringing together 3.2 million acres, or 5,000 square miles, of mixed private and public grassland along the Missouri River, acquiring ranches at what they said were market prices.

Think Big

In the 19 years since that time, the Prairie Reserve group has raised $160 million in private donations, nearly all of it from out-of-state high-tech and business entrepreneurs across the U.S. and beyond.

 They have acquired 30 properties, totaling 104,000 acres. To this they added about three times that—more than 300,000 acres—in grazing leases on adjacent federal and state land. This is what owners do when they purchase land with grazing rights.

 These environmentalists are claiming lands in a unique and ambitious way. They are buying up the private ranches one by one, adding each to large tracts of federal and state land along the upper Missouri river, and then working to set aside all these lands in ways that can be difficult to ever reverse.

Others have long purchased lands for conservation, such as The Nature Conservancy, but none have done it in the large-scale they propose, and few have had the ambition, as the Prairie Reserve does, says National Geographic, of retaining ownership and management authority of that land and adjoining publicly owned lands.

Best of all, in the view of the new Prairie Reserve, enormous pieces of federal and state land span the area. Linking them together with available private lands makes sense, particularly with the possibility of controlling all of it into the distant future.

The ranches purchased are all strategically located near two federally protected areas: the 1.1 million-acre Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the 377,000-acre Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, according to National Geographic (Feb.2020, p69-89), which partners with Prairie Reserve in the Last Wild Places initiative. Other Federal and State lands intersect as well.

The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument cuts through an awe-inspiring stretch of scenic rugged country, planned to be part of Prairie Reserve’s set-aside refuge, but disputed by local ranchers. National Conservation Lands map.

Even a nearby Indian Reservation, Ft. Belknap with tribal bison, has joined the Prairie Reserve in talks about letting their buffalo roam free in the area, an idea that has great appeal for Native Americans with their buffalo-hunting heritage and culture.

At a powwow, Kenneth Tuffy Helgeson, a member of the Nakoda Tribe, said the reserve’s goal of bringing back thousands of wild bison to the plains will help restore a crucial part of his tribe’s culture. The animals were nearly eradicated from the prairies by white settlers.

“It’s a reminder of days past,” says George Horse Capture Jr., a member of the Aaniiih Tribe. “It’s hard to put into words. To me they are a symbol of strength, endurance and the failure—the absolute failure—to go the way of the dodo bird. They were teetering, but now they’re back.”

Tribes and others are given regulated opportunities to hunt American Prairie’s bison.

Grassland biodiversity requires abundance, Freese says. “You’ve got to think big.”

Think of the refuge and monument as the trunk of a tree, Gerrity adds.

“In buying nearby properties we’re trying to expand the girth of the tree,” adding branches to the trunk and bringing about easy movement of wildlife between river systems and grasslands.

Beauty of the Land

Sean Gerrity, founding co-father, stands on one of the vast ranching properties his Prairie Reserve recently purchased. It looks like a miniature Grand Canyon—a panorama of deep, white canyons cut through by a wide, winding river.

“What you’re seeing here is the incredible beauty of the Missouri River out in front of us,” he declares. “Those beautiful cliffs and the raking light coming across in the afternoon.”

His goal is to “rewild” this swath of the Great Plains and return all the species that once lived here, before white settlers arrived. Wolves, grizzly bears, mountain lions and 10,000 wild bison.

Gerrity points down to the valley below. “Over here would be some elk,” he says. “Over here bison. On the riverbanks would be a mama grizzly bear with two or three little cubs walking along the mud there.”

The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument spans 149 miles of the Upper Missouri River. Cutting through rugged badlands, it is little changed in over 200 years since Meriwether Lewis and William Clark travelled through on their epic journey of exploration. Photo by BLM.gov.

These animals can be seen in Yellowstone Park. But the APR goes it even better. A new kind of national park that is free to the public and privately funded through both small donors and some of the wealthiest people in the world.

For Gerrity, who moved back home to Montana from Silicon Valley, where he ran a firm that consulted for companies such as AT&T and Apple, the project promised a different kind of long-term investment.

“To work on something—pour your heart into it—and arrange it like a giant work of art and the public would by and large appreciate and realize it would last far, far beyond my lifetime? That just seemed like a dream come true,” Gerrity says.

This is one of only a few intact grassland ecosystems in the world, he says, and he wants to fully restore it before it disappears.

“This wildlife habitat is going away and there is almost none left,” he warns. “This is the last bit in the great plains, for the most part, where we can do a project of this size.”

Trying to be Good Neighbors

Multimillion-dollar donations have poured in from heirs to the Mars Candy Company—Forrest Mars, Jr. and John Mars— a German billionaire, Hansjoerg Wyss, Susan Packard Orr, and top executives in the finance industry. Current board members, Erivan and Helga Haub, Gib and Susan Myers and George and Susan Matelich, are also major donors.

Even though the money comes almost entirely from out-of-state, the staff of American Prairie Reserve, experienced negotiators, have tried to be good neighbors. They made all the right moves in their goal of bringing together this huge plot of lands along the Missouri river.

They established a firm Montana base, placing what they call their national headquarters in Bozeman, Montana. They hired as many employees and staff with a Montana connection as they could.

They encourage hunting, fishing and other recreation on the Prairie Reserve—all of which appeals to Montanans.

They’ve donated beef and bison to local Native American food banks, sponsored rodeo athletes, and donated buffalo-hunting events for local fund-raisers, according to National Geographic, which assisted by sponsoring a “Living with Wildlife” conference for ranching neighbors, who are concerned about the arrival of more predators on the prairies.

Importance of Collaboration

The APR staff talk reassuringly of their desire—and in fact, need—to collaborate with local communities and ranchers.

Their website praises teamwork. “When appropriate and when it will lead to smoother, faster and better execution, we act collaboratively to accomplish results. We proactively contribute, and act, on ideas to improve cross team collaboration and enthusiastically support the efforts of others to do the same.

“We work to understand the goals of others, and effectively communicate our own, and make consistent efforts to help each other achieve them.”

Both the Bureau of Land Management and Montana Parks, Fish and Wildlife seem ready to support the APR request for a change in rules for leases, which would enable bison to displace cattle.

Montana PFW Director Martha Williams, stresses the word collaboration, too, while supporting APR in its desire for bison to be classed as wildlife. She sees the plan to change the status of bison from livestock to wildlife as an opportunity.

“Wild bison have been successfully restored under a variety of management regimes and in a wide range of ecosystems,” Williams said in a press release. “But in order for a proposal to proceed in Montana, it must be devised collaboratively, taking into account the concerns of landowners and communities small and large, and it should follow the model of other successful wildlife restoration efforts.”

Tom France, Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation assures people that the APR group has local support. “The fact is, an overwhelming majority of Montanans support restoration,” he says.

On their website Prairie Reserve emphasizes the value of teamwork and collaborating with others.

Yet APR is very clear in its goals. They are out in plain sight: “Our mission is to create the largest nature reserve in the continental United States, a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of America’s heritage.”

“When we’re done with it,” Garrity told National Geographic, “it’s going to last hundreds of years.”

Left to Right:

Conner Murnion bails off a bronc at the Milk River Challenge Open Rodeo during the Phillips County Fair. Photo by Pierre Bibbs, Phillips County News

Phillips County Fair brings out the crowds. Though sparsely settled, it is cattle country and made up of close-knit communities. Photo by maltachamber.com

Anna Brown takes a fall during the Mutton Busting event at the Youth Rodeo. She finished in fourth place with a score of 61. Photo by Pierre Bibbs, Phillips County News.

Is the area really empty of people?

It’s true the APR does have the support of many Montanans. They have always supported the freedom of enjoying nature, hunting, fishing, outdoor recreation of all kinds, and keeping it available for all.

When viewed from the far-off crowded seaboard states, where the majority of Americans live, it may seem that central Montana is an area empty of people and unneeded for agriculture, as Prairie Reserve staff tell their story.

“We watched a video narrated by Tom Selek, and most people watching it would have believed that nobody was really here,” says Deanna Robbins, a rancher from Roy and co-founder of the United Property Owners of Montana, an advocacy group.

“The video never shows a ranch. It rarely shows a person, and totally ignores that there are families on the land with lives and communities that support and depend on them.”

But people do live here. Hundreds of men and women have planted their roots in Phillips County for well over 100 years—have worked hard to build strong communities, invested their lives, their incomes and their families. Literally, blood, sweat and tears.

This is cattle country, so it is sparsely settled. Still, it’s not empty.

Furthermore, every rocky ridge has its own history, its own story. Every badlands creek bed that runs high in springtime and only trickles through by August, could tell a tale or two. Is all this to be obliterated with the goal of returning these coulees to nature?

Every town, no matter how small, has its doctors, dentists, bankers, teachers, churches, and businesses of all kinds, courthouse, public buildings, its city boosters and all the rest—built up through all those years—just like any small new England town.

For its part, APR makes the argument that the reserve, once completed, will be a relatively small island in a sea of agriculture.

Not so small, local people contend—the area is larger than Yellowstone Park. As large as Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park put together.

Already the Prairie Reserve swallows up the 30 ranches purchased, with a planned 20 still to go. That’s at least 50 families gone from parts of seven counties, much of it in Phillips County.

Why can’t they stop now, be content with what they have?

Sure, there’s room for some buffalo on this range. Prairie Reserve already runs nearly a thousand buffalo there.

Prairie Reserve already has nearly a thousand head of buffalo grazing their property in the area. Photo by National Park Service.

Maybe that’s enough. Why would 10,000 be that much better?

APR also makes a case that their project will bring in thousands of tourists.

But ranchers don’t see the benefits of tourism replacing the close-knit vibrancy of their own community.

Roger Siroky, a rancher who lives near Roy and Bohemian Corner, foresees just the opposite effect. Towns drying up without agriculture to sustain them.

“All these businesses, ranches and farms, they all complement each other so you have a vibrant community, with all the various businesses and services that serve that community.

“It is total fallacy how the APR is going to [bring all this] tourism. It’s going to destroy the economic vitality and financial workings of the whole area.

“As people leave, there are less people. This business shuts down, and then that business shuts down until you have a few people left as an island without the infrastructure remaining to serve a producing community, and it simply goes downhill.

“It gets to be a domino effect,” he adds.

World hunger continues

Furthermore, ranchers feel a strong commitment to help provide food for a hungry world. They know that throughout the world, people are going to bed hungry every night.

By the year 2050 the world population is estimated to increase by over 35 percent to 9 billion. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says this will cause the demand for food to nearly double—a rise of 70 to 100 percent.

In 2017, Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest prevalence of food insecurity (55 percent) and severe food insecurity (28 percent), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (32 percent food insecure and 12 percent severely food insecure), and South Asia (30 percent and 13 percent), according to USDA. A lot of hungry people.

“We provide food for the world,” says rancher Alex Bellmayer. His family has run cattle on the shortgrass prairie near Malta, Montana for more than a century.

“It’s a lot of work,” he said. “But it’s a good lifestyle.”

“Agriculture is Montana’s number one industry,” agrees Gladys Walling of Winifred. “When my husband and I purchased land with allotments on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, we worked with BLM in managing those allotments. In a dry year, we limited the number of cattle and moved our cattle out earlier.

“The APR is requesting that the BLM allow them to graze bison year around and remove interior fencing on their Federal allotments connected to their private property.

“My hope is that the BLM will continue leasing with good management of these allotments and deny the APR’s request,” she adds.

BLM range specialists explain to ranchers the merits of cross-fencing and rotating cattle frequently from one smaller pasture to another to make the best use of available grass.

But instead, the APR theory seems to be that buffalo will “know” when they are overgrazing and naturally make the best use of the grass in their single enormous pasture. So no divider fences?

“Having the traditional use of the Federal grazing districts is a large part of many of these operations out here, and it certainly plays a role in growing protein for a hungry world,” says Robbins.

Robbins understands the APR appeal to outside investors, but she’s not buying.

“It’s such a marketable pitch—this big American Serengeti,” she said. “They don’t have to stick to the truth much, and people fall for it.”

“Agricultural producers have protected this land. It is pristine due to 100 years of agriculture caring for it,” Robbins added.

Greg Oxarart, a 60-year-old rancher who has lived in Phillips County his entire life, says the outside money financing the project bothers him.

“I just don’t believe in their mission,” Oxarart said of the APR. “They plan on taking over this whole county. Malta would be off the map if they have their way.

“People who make a living here take good care of the land because if they don’t they’re soon gone.” They also help to feed the nation, he said. It’s the contribution farmers and ranchers make to the hungry people of the world and they are proud to do this.

Drought in Somalia in the Horn of Africa. Up to 178,000 children were expected to be impacted by severe acute malnutrition between July 2019 and June 2020. Adding to challenges were swarms of locusts destroying crops near the end of 2019. Photo by Stuart Price.

How can Young People return Home to Ranch?

“I can’t believe that people would support what they’re trying to do,” says Bill French, an 81-year-old rancher who owns property abutting the reserve. “They’re trying to ruin what I’ve worked the last 60 years of my life to build up. They don’t say that, but that’s what they’re doing.”

One of the most distressing aspects is how the APR enterprises aims to co-opt the future. If they succeed, land set aside for conservation is land that will be unavailable for cattle far into the distant future for ranching families to expand.

Ranchers contend that their millions of fund-raising dollars gives APR an unfair advantage when ranches come up for sale.

Younger generations already have difficulty financially, taking over ranching from parents and grandparents. It can take a lifetime to get the land to pay for itself.

Phillips County Farm Bureau President Tom DePuydt explains it is difficult for agriculture producers in the county to compete financially with the American Prairie Reserve for land.

“We are seeing young families coming back to many of these places, but it’s almost like there’s a cloud hanging over their head,” said DePuydt. “What’s their future if these people keep coming in with that type of money? Are they just going to get squeezed out if they can’t even compete for leases?

“There are a lot of kids who want to come home and ranch. We see the land around here priced really high for the recreational value, and agriculture won’t pay for it.”

“Not everybody has enough money set aside to sell at a lower price,” said Robbins “Making a go in ranching is challenging, and the APR’s ability to raise funds and receive grants makes it all the harder for ranchers to compete for land.”

Oxarart has three sons who would like to come home to Phillips County to ranch, but land prices, which he says have increased since APF began buying property, are making that difficult. If four or five people banded together to buy land in order to make a living, he’d support that, he said.

The land is beautiful, he says, but it’s difficult to make a living here because it’s not intensely productive with cattle ranching its best use, Oxarart says.

“That’s why not many of them will live here,” he says of APR supporters. “When it’s 40 below in December, it becomes a challenge to get things done. Then you depend on your neighbors when you have breakdowns.”

Rancher Greg Oxarart moves cattle up road in south Phillips County. He has concerns about the impact of Prairie Reserve in cattle country. Photo by Lauren Chase, Montana Stockgrowers.

Concerns for their Cattle

 Other issues divide as well. Cattle men and women can’t help feeling deep concerns over basic difficulties bound to confront them if bison are established, and large predators not currently living on APR lands are brought in, as they have been in Yellowstone Park.

For example:

• How can ranchers protect their livestock from the relentless goal of environmentalists introducing still more large predators such as packs of wolves, grizzly bears and mountain lions? Already, wolf packs brought into Yellowstone Park have multiplied and spread into many Montana counties.

• How will ranchers protect their livestock from devastating diseases like brucellosis that run rampant in elk and other wild animals?

• Will all those miles of exterior fencing be built high enough and strong enough—and consistently maintained well enough through all kinds of weather and conditions to hold buffalo—including those lone bison bulls on the rampage?

These are serious, important questions. But they all hinge on that larger question. Which vision or goal do Montanans want most for their citizens?

Vibrant communities can disappear

Are Montanans willing to sit by and watch thriving communities shattered and broken apart, in order that people can enjoy the wildlife refuges and parks that have always been there for them?

The only difference being, with Prairie Reserve they’ll be under another name, without cattle, with outsider, big money control, and surely some long-lasting bitterness over how changes have taken place.

Montanans have always supported the freedom of enjoying nature, hunting, fishing, outdoor recreation of all kinds, and keeping it available for all.

Yet having it forced on them in this way can be galling. The high-handedness of these outsiders is appalling. They have discovered something good and seem to believe they can take charge of it and keep it in “pristine” condition better than local people.

The federal bureaucracy of BLM seems all too willing to change leasing rules to accommodate the wishes of Prairie Reserve. Even Montana state wildlife officials approved a plan to allow bison to be categorized as wildlife outside of Yellowstone National Park.

“It worries me more than water, wind, drought, prices,” says Craig French, a rancher whose family is involved with the anti-APR movement in Phillips County.

“I see them coming in with big money, buying up ranches and walking over the top of the people who are already here,” says ranch owner Conni French. “For them to be successful in their goals, we can’t be here, and that’s not OK with us.”

French, who owns C Lazy J Ranch, believes in stewardship of the land and says she will never sell her spread to the reserve.

“We are the best hope to keep this land here,” French says. “I really feel like ranchers—these land stewards—are the best option for conservation.”

Two visions for the land, two goals that collide and divide

 There are two visions here, two separate goals for this land. One continues the local vision for progress as American settlers have always understood it. The other is the dream of turning the clock back to nature in a big way.
The concept of “wilding,” so precious to the environmentalist, means something different to the rancher. It means obliterating—destroying all progress.

Malta, a town of 2,000 population, could dwindle, say ranchers. They worry that each ranch APR acquires is one lost to the community, draining taxes from county treasury, children from schools, and business from stores. Photo by maltachamber.com.

The land can’t revert to nature in the way the Prairie Reserve supporters envision without clearing away the history—and the people. It means selling off all the cattle that graze this productive country.

This is what concerns the ranchers, who are realists. Its about two very different visions of how people want to use land in the American West. And who decides?

On the Great Plains of Montana, conservationists, environmentalists, and some tribes want to rewind the clock and return wild bison to the shortgrass prairie.

But ranchers say if that happens, their way of life—their very culture—will disappear. Sadly, it seems to be true.

They say each acre taken from cattle grazing threatens ranching operations and hurts the local economy.

Robbins said, “We feel the APR is not being honest. What APR really wants is a takeover of Federal land and control of how it’s managed.

“APR wants the rules changed to year-round grazing for their bison, rather than seasonal. The private land they own is a pretty small piece in proportion,” Robbins added. “They want to buy as little land as they can and control the Federal Land.

“Now they want the BLM to change the rules on your public land so they can graze year-round, tear out interior fences… If BLM changes its rules for APR then they’re actively empowering APR to bulldoze Montana families and communities.”

“We should not allow them to conduct a radical experiment on BLM land,” testified Chuck Denowh, of the United Property Owners of Montana.

Small Town Businesses Decline and Disappear

In Phillips County, where the American Prairie Reserve has most of its land holdings and 86,000 head of cattle graze the land, many neighbors remain skeptical of the ambitious and groundbreaking conservation effort to save unbroken native prairie, viewing the growing reserve as a threat to a way of life and productive agricultural ground that fuels rural economies.

“I wasn’t aware of this purchase, but I think the loss of a ranch, and especially the continuation of additional ranches, will have an effect on our county,” said Phillips County Farm Bureau President Tom DePuydt, of a recent sale to Prairie Reserve.

For its part, APR makes the argument that the reserve, once completed, will be a relatively small island in a sea of agriculture.

Not so small, local people contend, since it displaces the 30 ranches already purchased, with a planned 20 still to go. That’s 50 families gone from parts of seven counties, and a great deal of Phillips County. They ask, why can’t they stop now, be content with what they have?

“Our country is real,” says Bill French, whose biggest fear is that the lands being set aside by the reserve will eventually be declared a national monument, sealing their future. “These people at American Prairie think they’ve discovered it.”

French’s grandparents homesteaded in the area in 1917, his wife’s, in 1910. He has served on the local soil and conservation district for 55 years.

“For these people to introduce or want to introduce free-roaming bison would basically put every rancher within reach of them out of business,” said Dee Boyce, who ranches between Lewistown and Grass Range.

Ranching is what makes Malta tick. Bellmayer said without it, his town would just be a brown smudge along the Amtrak railway line between Chicago and Seattle.

“If you have nothing but wild bison and antelope, then you might as well take the town out,” a rancher from the nearby town of Malta recently said on a local public radio station. “They’re destroying not only a way of life,” said another. “They’re destroying a very vital economic base which is a foundation of America.”

Boyce says, “I want the people in Lewistown and anywhere else to stop and think how they’re going to replace production agriculture as we know it. Agriculture is an important thing to this community and to me as a producer.

“For these people to introduce or want to introduce free-roaming bison would basically put every rancher within reach of them out of business.

“There are other options for conservation” other than APR, says Conni French. “Ranchers and other land stewards have been caring for and restoring this landscape for generations. This attitude of stewardship continues today.

“Local communities are working together with multiple stakeholders to create a win-win scenario,” she assures them. “Ranchers, wildlife, communities, economies and this unique ecosystem can all benefit from this type of collaboration.”

Yet, many ranchers feel—in some ways—that they are fighting this battle alone, with little support from town neighbors.

Maybe it is time for all Montanans to take a closer look at what is here, and what’s at risk of being destroyed. Surely many will say, “Stop! It’s enough.”

Originally published June 23, 2020 on Buffalo Tales and Trails

Pablo’s Great Roundup and Shipment—Part 2

Written by Francie M. Berg

Pablo’s Great Buffalo Shipments to Canada

In 1907 the Michel Pablo herd from western Montana began arriving in Canada. At their end of the railroad, Canadians cheered the buffalo’s arrival.

They knew they had scored a coup in getting “the finest buffalo herd in America,” as William Hornaday, president of the new American Bison Society, called Michal Pablo’s half-wild herd from Montana.

Pablo’s buffalo arrived in Canada, weary from riding 3 days, 1,200 miles, in special boxcars switched over five railway lines. The Canadians assured Pablo they would buy his entire herd—bulls, cows and even newborn calves—at his price of $200, in addition to shipping charges of about $45.

The first two shipments in 1907 made it in good shape. Such a long shipment of a herd that large had never been attempted before.

Pablo initially estimated that he owned about 400 bison, but as it turned out he had over 700. It was not easy to get them loaded on the train, however. What he thought would be a roundup lasting one summer or two, stretched out for five years.

The Canadians must have watched anxiously as Americans in the US, chagrinned at their loss, began offering higher payments for what was left, even to a reported $700 per animal.

Their contract called for Pablo to deliver the buffalo to the railhead at Ravalli, Montana, where they could be loaded on railway cars and shipped to Canadian destinations. It was a 3-day train ride of 1,200 miles, travelling over five different railway lines.

Because it took so long to load the buffalo, some stood in railway cars on the siding for up to 14 days before all the cars could get loaded.

Pablo received an initial down payment of $10,000 from Canada and began planning a 2-year roundup and shipments for 1907-1908. He was deemed a very wealthy man by his Native friends, but his expenses in getting the buffalo to and into the railroad cars turned out to be large.

Michel Pablo’s first shipments in 1907 to Canada looked pretty good, and even by the 4th of July in 1909 the Daily Missoulian in Missoula, MT, could report:

“With the shipment Wednesday of nearly 200 buffalo from Ravalli, Montana, to Canada,
all but the outlaw remnant of the largest herd of wild bison in the United States were removed from their native heath to the limited confines of a foreign park.”

Pablo had at first considered driving his buffalo herd north across the border with the cowboys he hired, but chasing them the 50 miles to the train station in Ravalli proved how impossible this could be.

Unloading at Elk Island Park

In Canada, Pablo’s buffalo were supposed to be unloaded at Wainwright, Alberta, where land was set aside for a new national bison park. But Pablo’s first shipment arrived before its buildings and fences were ready.

Luckily, Elk Island Park was conveniently located near a railroad station, a short distance east of Edmonton. Built as an elk preserve as its name suggests, it was entirely surrounded by sturdy 10-foot fences.

Pablo’s first 400 buffalo were unloaded at Elk Island Park, just east of Edmonton, in 1907.

By the end of 1907 Elk Island was stocked with 400 buffalo, 175 elk, 75 moose and 80 deer, according to its first Game Warden Victor Hiscock.

Hiscock sketched a map of Elk Island Park—the first destination for Pablo’s buffalo.

As seen in this map, signed by Hiscock in 1907, the Canadian National Railway swung a quarter circle to the Lamont Station, seen at the top right, following the Saskatchewan River from Edmonton, at the lower left.

This is Game Warden Victor Hiscock’s map of the first destination for Pablo’s buffalo at Elk Island Park. They were unloaded at Lamont Station and trailed 4½ miles into the Park.

At Lamont Station the buffalo were unloaded and trailed 4 ½ miles along a temporary fence. Most likely, this was built as a temporary trail fenced on both sides, bringing the wild herds running across the river and through a gate into Elk Island Park.

On the map Elk Island Park appears to be 16 square miles, 4 miles on each side, surrounded by 10-foot fences. Since Hiscock noted the size at approximately 30 square miles, the park probably included hay meadows, where 400 tons of hay were stacked for winter feed for the elk and buffalo.

In addition to the lake containing small islands—hence the name Elk Island—the park area included a warden’s house and what was identified as Fort Sask (Ft. Saskatchewan).

Within this area Hiscock listed 400 buffalo, 175 elk, 75 moose and 80 deer. In addition, he noted there were musquask (muskrats?), a few beaver, skunk, weasel and coyotes, which “roam at leisure.”

It was a perfect halfway station for Pablo’s buffalo.

Canadians Praise Pablo—Man of ‘Sterling Integrity’

In Canada, Michel Pablo was praised as a man of “sterling integrity” who kept his promises.

He received offers from individuals in the United States to sell his remaining bison at even higher prices than agreed-upon with Canada. But Pablo remained steadfast in his agreement with the Canadians.

One D.J. Benham, a journalist for the Edmonton Bulletin in Canada, wrote in Nov 8, 1907:

“When the sale to a foreign country was positively confirmed it aroused a storm of opposition and criticism, especially in Montana, where it was looked upon as a distinct national loss.

“Offers of double and nearly treble the price Canada was paying were officially made to Mr. Pablo, presumably with the hope that the great monetary consideration of nearly a quarter of a million dollars might be an inducement sufficiently alluring to cause him to break his bargain. . .

“[But] Mr. Pablo. . . is a gentleman of sterling integrity, one whose word is bond. It stands greatly to his credit that all the alluring offers for his buffalo, even one of $700 a head, were quietly refused on the ground that a bargain is a bargain and as such is sacred.

“He belongs to the ranching period and is a striking example of what a man of determination may accomplish in achieving success in the face of adverse circumstances sufficient to discourage the majority.

“Of magnificent physique bred by a strenuous life in the open, tall and still erect he carries his 68 years so lightly that he might easily be mistaken for a man of 50.

Michel Pablo surveying his herd of buffalo on his Montana ranch. The Canadian press praised Pablo as a leader and man of honor. A man of “magnificent physique bred by a strenuous life in the open, tall and still erect he carries his 68 years so lightly that he might easily be mistaken for a man of 50.”

“Quiet determination is stamped on his features, while his other dominant characteristics would single him out as a leader in any community. He had resolutely made up his mind that Canada . . . should reap the reward of enterprise and straightforward dealing.

“Among those who know him best Mr. Pablo is regarded as the soul of honour and he enjoys their esteem accordingly.”

‘The finest herd of American Bison in the world’

William Hornaday, president of the newly formed American Bison Society, wrote his congratulations to the Canadians in that organization’s annual report:

“The most important event of 1907 in the life history of the American Bison was the action of the Canadian Government in purchasing the entire Pablo-Allard herd of 628 animals, and transporting 398 of them to Elk Island Park, Canada.

“A fine pair in the world’s finest herd,” photographer NA Foster titled this photo of Pablo’s buffalo in Montana, with the snow-capped Mission Mountains in the background. Montana Historical Society.

“Of the 240 Bison still remaining on the Flathead range, all save 10 head belong to Canada, and will be removed during 1908.

“Inasmuch as it was impossible to induce the United States Government to purchase the Pablo-Allard herd, and forever maintain it on the Flathead Reservation, the next best thing was that it should pass into the hands of the Canadian Government, and be located on the upper half of the former range of the species.

“The Canadian Government deserves to be sincerely congratulated upon its wisdom, its foresight and its genuine enterprise in providing $157,000 for the purchase of the Pablo herd, in addition to the cost of transporting the animals, and fencing Elk Island Park.

“It is for the Canadians to write the full history of this important transaction, and record the names of the men who are entitled to the credit for the grand coup by which Canada secured for her people the finest herd of American Bison in the world.

“The friends of the Bison may indeed be thankful that the great northwestern herd is not to be scattered to the ends of the earth, and finally disappear in the unstable hands of private individuals.

“The Pablo herd should not have been permitted to leave the country. . . But Pablo cannot be blamed for the sale. The expense to Pablo has been great.

“The reservation is soon to be thrown open, his range will be gone, and so large a herd cannot be maintained without a large and free range. It is said on excellent authority he would prefer to have them kept in America, but saw no opportunity to sell to the Government.”

When the decision was finally made by the US Congress to establish a National Bison Range in the Flathead Valley, under the continual urging of the newly formed American Bison Society and its members, Hornaday made this comment.

“The cost of the [Flathead] range will not be as great as the loss to the nation of the herd that has been sold.

“If the money that should have been put into the herd is now in part put into this range, and in part into animals, in a few years the increment will be such as to make a herd of which the nation may be proud.”

Origins of Pablo’s Buffalo

Although Canada’s first public buffalo herd was the small exhibition herd in Banff originating with James McKay, the bulk of the plains bison in Canada today came not from Banff, but from a single source: the Pablo-Allard herd.

Pablo’s buffalo were a grand genetic mix of buffalo that originated from calves captured in both Canada and the United States, by Sam Walking Coyote, James McKay, Charles Goodnight and Buffalo Jones, as far distant as Saskatchewan, Montana, Kansas and Texas.

While Jones had captured some bison in Kansas and Texas, some of his bison were purchased from Samuel Bedson, and had been captured by James McKay in Saskatchewan.

With such different places of origin, the herd held by Pablo and Allard had genetic stock from across North America. These bison were kept cattle-gene free because the cattle-buffalo hybrids Pablo and Allard purchased from Jones, it was said, “were never allowed to mix with the thoroughbreds on the range, but were collected and sequestrated on Horse Island in the Flathead Lake.”

The herd’s origins with Sam Walking Coyote may have been small, but the plains bison gathered by Pablo and Allard were genetically diverse and all multiplied greatly.

Pablo’s buffalo brought a grand genetic mix of buffalo that originated from calves captured in both Canada and the United States, from Saskatchewan, Montana, Kansas and Texas. Photographer Steve Edgerton, Parks Canada

15 Boxcars of Buffalo Arrive in July 1909

In Pablo’s third shipment in July 1909, 15 boxcars arrived in Canada loaded with 190 head of buffalo.

The Wainwright Star, Wainwright, Alberta, reported the welcome arrival of this impressive shipment on that day.

“On Saturday last, 15 cars of buffalo arrived here from the Pablo herd in Montana, and were immediately unloaded in the Buffalo Park.

“The bunch consisted of 190 head and at times what seemed almost insurmountable obstacles have been overcome in rounding up this bunch.”

Commissioner of Dominion Parks Howard Douglas, Montana Immigration Agent A. Ayotte, and H. C. McMullan, C. P. R. livestock agent, Calgary, accompanied the shipment.

“The animals comprising this shipment were immediately unloaded and despite expectations did not take unkindly to the fence around the corral at the unloading place.

“They had been in the cars for periods varying from 4 to 14 days and were consequently quite weary. The railway journey from Ravalli was made in the fine time of 72 hours and the bison stood the journey fairly well,” according to The Wainwright Star.

“No time was lost in releasing the buffalo, and before dark the entire trainload was quietly grazing in the park.

“Superintendent Ellis and his assistant, Louie Bioletti, gave every assistance to the party and we were enabled to see the buffalo at ease in their new home.

“They were scattered here and there in small herds, while an occasional one would be found enjoying a dust bath in one of the innumerable buffalo wallows, which were made by the wild herds many years ago.

“They seemed to take well to their new home and the majority paid scant attention to visitors.

“Occasionally, we ran across a small herd which viewed us with suspicion and started pawing the ground. When their tails began to raise with an ugly looking crook, we considered discretion to be the better part of valor and immediately left for other sections of the park.

“The 508 buffalo now in the park have an ideal home.” The Wainwright Star. Wainwright, Alberta, July 9, 1909.

Unloading buffalo at the train station in Wainwright. Buffalo Trails and Tales, Wainwright and Districts.

The July 1909 shipment unloaded at the new Buffalo National Park created near the town of Wainwright in east central Alberta on June 5, 1909.

They had been shut up in railway cars up to 14 days and were “weary,” but took well to their new home at Wainwright and paid scant attention to visitors.

Shipping ‘the Outlaw Remnant’

What was termed “the outlaw remnant” was still to be captured and shipped.

“There are still at least 150 head on the Flathead Reserve, which will be shipped in September. Before these arrive, however, 75 buffalo will be sent to the Park here from the Banff herd.”

In fact, after the July 1909 shipment the last 100 or so renegade buffalo arrived much more slowly than that, only a few at a time.

The renegade bulls were captured and shipped a few at a time.

Both Plains and Wood buffalo live in Elk Island National Park. Here two bulls spar off in testing their strength and resolve against each other. Parks Canada.

The first three train shipments, two in 1907 and one in 1909, had brought 600 head to Elk Island.

But after that the Canadian shipments dwindled fast, according to the American Bison Society’s annual report of March 31, 1913:

• 1st and 2nd shipments in 1907 – 410 head

• 3rd shipment July 1909 –190 head

• 4th shipment in October 1909 – 28 head

• 5th shipment June 1910 – 38 head

• 6th shipment October 1910 – 28 head

• 7th shipment May 2011 – 7 head

• 8th shipment – June 2012 – 7 head

Total from Michel Pablo was 708, according to that report.

Identified in the final shipment of 7 head were 1 two-year old bull, 3 cows, 2 yearling heifers and 1 calf.

“These animals were all in good condition on arrival,” reported Hornaday.

“It has been found necessary to slaughter some of the fierce old bulls which had been injured while fighting,” he added. “and the balance of these aged animals will later be transferred from their respective parks to Banff, where they will doubtless be a great attraction to tourists and others.”

After 1909, when the fences were completed, Pablo’s buffalo were shipped directly to the new Buffalo National Park near Wainwright.

Hornaday’s report lists the total buffalo at three Canadian National Parks—Elk Island, Wainwright and Banff–as 1,287 head by the end of 1913.

“The number of males is approximately the same as the number of females, and a large number of the former are aged. The total number of calves successfully raised during the year is 221.

“Several applications from city parks for live buffalo have been lately received and are under consideration, and one cow buffalo has been loaned to the City of Vancouver, BC, during the past season.”

That “outlaw remnant” proved toughest of all to get loaded on rail cars.

An impassioned and sympathetic journalist in Missoula, FL Baghy, described their capture.

“Trapped into manmade corrals, roped and loaded into cages, bound down with chains and wire, hauled over long and rough roads, then dragged by main force Into freight cars and shipped like so many common cattle over the rail roads, nearly 600 of these lords of the plains have been dragged from the free and untrammeled range of their nativity into a national playground, where they will be kept as noble specimens of a rapidly vanishing species of American big game,”

“And when the 150 head that remain upon the reservation are rounded up and shipped this fall, there will be none of the noble animals left to dispute the right of the white man’s stock to- every blade of grass on the range where once the buffalo was lord of all he surveyed.”

But it was not that easy. These were wild bison. The 150 were the wiliest and most troublesome of wild buffalo. They had escaped many times from the skilled cowboys Pablo hired.

Reporters observed that many horses were killed and many cowboys injured. Finally fences 26 miles long, converging to the corrals at Ravalli, Montana, were built, and the wildest and fiercest of all bison were gradually brought together in small bands.

Often when they found themselves being driven from their native hideouts, they turned on the cowboys.

Exhibition Herd Maintained at Elk Island

The bison were only supposed to be at Elk Island Park temporarily but they quickly became a main attraction. The park was just east of Edmonton on the open Plains.

From the time of their arrival, they caused a sensation among local people and visitors from across Canada. There’d been no buffalo in the Edmonton area for more than 30 years and thousands of people marveled at these “Majestic Monarchs of the Plains.”

In 1909 the fences of the new Buffalo National Park near Wainwright were completed, so the bison at Elk Island were rounded up and shipped to the new park.

But the Minister of the Interior, Edmontonian Frank Oliver, ordered a small exhibition herd left behind.

Lone bull grazes at Elk Island National Park. Parks Canada.

It was the 40 to 70 who evaded capture that formed the nucleus of the bison at Elk Island today—a herd that would grow over the years and see individuals sent to support numerous conservation herds around the world.

It is a good thing, say Park managers today, that these bison remained at Elk Island, because things did not go well for Buffalo National Park at Wainwright.

A Tough Workout for Buffalo Wranglers

For the second roundup in November that fall, the Canadian press—waiting in the wings—had this to say:

“The drives . . . were as spectacular as anything ever seen on the range.

“The battle grounds were in the bad lands of Pend d’Oreille and in the foothills of the mountains, where every man took his life in his hands in the dare-devil dashes hither and thither, through cuts and ravines, over ridges and foothills or down the valleys honeycombed by the dry courses of the mountain torrents, in fast and furious pursuit of the bands of buffalo. . .”

“Sometimes the cowboys were the pursuers and sometimes they were pursued.

“In cases where their anxiety to turn an animal carried them closer to the buffalo than discretion should warrant, a vicious charge would result, and the rider would have to extend his horse to the limit to escape from the horns of the furious monster.”

The Winnipeg Tribune, Dec 22, 1922, commented on the last shipment (which netted only 7 head):

In capturing the last “outlaw remnant,” the Canadian Press noted, “Sometimes the cowboys were the pursuers and sometimes they were pursued.” Photo by Steve Edgerton, Parks Canada.

“Only three times in six weeks of daily drives did the cowboys succeed in getting any of the buffalo into the corrals.

“The buffalo, when they found themselves being driven from their native pastures, turned on the cowboys. Many horses were killed and many cowboys injured.

“Finally fences 26 miles long, converging to the corrals at Ravalli, were built and the buffalo were gradually brought together.

Making a Last Fierce Struggle for Freedom. Often when a buffalo went down in the chute, he simply gave up and died. Courtesy Montana Historical Society.

“From Ravalli they traveled by railway to the reserve provided for them near Wainwright, where they have increased and multiplied, until they now number some 7,000.”

Montana’s Daily Missoulian had explained the difficulties of Pablo’s first roundup on May 29, 1907. The reporter warned, “To get a good idea of the difficulties that attend this work, take the most ornery range steer, multiply his meanness by 10, his stubbornness by 15, his strength by 40, his endurance by 50 and then add the products. You will then have some conception of the patience and skill that are required to load buffalo into a stock car.”

The total of 708 head in the American Bison Society count were far more than the Canadian Government thought they were going to receive. Some were young calves and apparently, each animal was counted separately and paid for in full regardless of age, including newborn calves, so the numbers kept changing in various reports.

According to the modern Canadian scientist Valerius Geist, during the 6 years between June 1, 1907 and June 6, 1912, Pablo delivered to Canadian authorities 716 bison. Of these, 631 went to Buffalo National Park and the other 85, to Elk Island National Park.

They were healthy and fertile, continually multiplying. The Canadian information written in the American Bison Society annual report indicated there were about 1,006 buffalo in National Parks distributed as follows: 27 head in Banff, 61 at Elk Island Park and 918 in Buffalo Park.

By 1919 between the three sites—Buffalo Park, Elk Island, and Banff—Canada’s National Park system owned 4,033 bison, in both the Plains and Wood buffalo subspecies.

Canadian rangers did a great deal of shifting these buffalo around as the years went by, and the prolific herds doubled and redoubled their numbers everywhere they were placed.

Corrals were built near the river to load buffalo onto boats for shipping to their various parks and destinations across Canada. Parks Canada.

For example, in June 1925 some 6,673 plains bison were shipped from Buffalo National Park to Wood Buffalo National Park. This included 4,826 yearlings, 1,515 two-year-olds, and 332 three-year-olds, most of them female.

Originally published July 28, 2020

Pablo’s Great Buffalo Roundup and Grand Shipment - Part 1

by Francie M. Berg

Pablo’s Grand Buffalo Roundup

When Michel Pablo sold all of his buffalo to the Canadian government, it took 6 years to get them rounded up and loaded. He expected the job to take one summer.

They were wild, and did not take kindly to being chased to the railway station in Ravalli, Montana—or getting loaded into railway cars. Especially the renegade bulls.

Pablo’s buffalo—he thought there were somewhere between 300 and 700 head—were grazing in the Bitterroot Mountain Range and the Lolo National Forest along the Flathead River.

Turned out there were 716 buffalo and it took 6 years before they all reached their destination in Wainwright, Alberta, according to Valerius Guist, Canadian author of Buffalo Nation: History and Legend of the North American Bison.

The first twenty cowboys Pablo hired for the job only succeeded in bringing in a few buffalo at a time, trailing and hazing and running them the 30 to 50 miles to the railroad pens and loading at Ravalli.

Cowboy artist Charlie Russell joined the Pablo crew for roundups in spring 1908 and fall 1909. He called the cowboys “a wild looking bunch that looked good to me.” Michel Pablo is 5th from left in dark shirt and tipped hat. Courtesy Montana Historical Society, NA Forsyth, photographer1869-1949.

In a story captioned, “Loading the Allard buffalo for shipment to the North,” Montana’s Daily Missoulian explained the difficulties of Pablo’s first roundup, on May 29, 1907.

“To get a good idea of the difficulties that attend this work, take the most ornery range steer, multiply his meanness by 10, his stubbornness by 15, his strength by 40, his endurance by 50 and then add the products.

“You will then have some conception of the patience and skill that are required to load buffalo into a stock car,” challenged the news article.

For the second roundup in November that first fall, the Canadian press—waiting in the wings—had this to say:

“The drives . . . were as spectacular as anything ever seen on the range.

“The battle grounds were in the bad lands of Pend d’Oreille and in the foothills of the mountains, where every man took his life in his hands in the dare-devil dashes hither and thither, through cuts and ravines, over ridges and foothills or down the valleys honeycombed by the dry courses of the mountain torrents, in fast and furious pursuit of the bands of buffalo. . .”

“Sometimes the cowboys were the pursuers and sometimes they were pursued.

“In cases where their anxiety to turn an animal carried them closer to the buffalo than discretion should warrant, a vicious charge would result, and the rider would have to extend his horse to the limit to escape from the horns of the furious monster.” (1)

“The drives were as spectacular as anything ever seen on the range,” reported the Edmonton Bulletin, Nov. 8, 1907. “Every man took his life in his hands in the dare-devil dashes hither and thither, through cuts and ravines, over ridges and foothills.” Montana Historical Society, NA Forsyth

Origins of Pablo’s buffalo herd

Pablo’s big, healthy, multiplying herd stemmed from the 6 buffalo calves that that Walking Coyote and his Blackfeet wife trailed west across the Continental Divide, through the most difficult trails of the Rocky Mountains that spring of 1873. When too tired to walk, some of the calves were carried on the backs of their pack horses.

For over ten years the small herd wandered the Flathead Reservation unmolested—the pride of the community, many said.

However, neighbors complained about the destruction they caused, breaking down fences, destroying gardens and crops.

When his friends, Michel Pablo and Charles Allard, offered to buy them for $2,000, Sam Walking Coyote decided to sell.

Ranchers in the Flathead valley, the two were of mixed blood. Pablo, the son of a Mexican cattle rancher and Piegan Blackfeet woman, born near Fort Benton, Montana, was married to a Native Pend d’Oreille woman, Agathe Finlely, at St. Ignatius Mission, according to Dave Carter, Executive Director of the American Bison Association.

Charles Allard, a neighbor and childhood friend, was born in Salem, Oregon. He had drifted onto the Flathead Reservation in Montana and married a woman of the Jocko Reservation.

The two men partnered to buy Sam Walking Coyote’s herd of 13 fairly-tame buffalo for $154 each in about 1884.

But Sam insisted—he would accept no personal checks. It had to be cash and to him, that meant $2,000 in gold.

Because of their Indian blood, the men and their wives had grazing rights on the Flathead Reservation. They could turn their buffalo herd loose on free range, as Walking Coyote had done.

Pleased with their purchase, they bought 26 more buffalo from Buffalo Jones of Kansas and their healthy herd grew rapidly until it exceeded 300 head.

The Pablo-Allard buffalo herd at home near the Flathead River 1884-1906. Montana Historical Society, NA Forsyth.

Pablo and Allard were generous in butchering a buffalo occasionally to share with neighbors, said Pablo’s son-in-law, Tony Barnaby.

He is quoted in an interview as saying that Pablo and Allard strongly believed that preserving the bison was their duty, privilege and pleasure.

“Pablo did not consider a buffalo as just a great shaggy beast of the plains,” said Barnaby.

“But rather symbolical of the real soul of the Indians’ past—something grand, that with the culture of his own race, had somehow managed to survive the undesirable features in the white man’s system.

“Often he would tell our Indians to butcher a fat buffalo. We all liked and respected Mr. Pablo and no Indian would steal any of his herd.”

Then—at the age of only 43—Allard died unexpectedly in 1896 of a knee injury that did not heal. His half of the herd, 150 head, went into his estate, and were sold, mostly in the area.

Pablo’s 150 head soon doubled again to 300.

Barnaby, described his father-in-law, as “lavishly generous to friend and foe—a lover of both races; fond of all animals.

“With a keen eye to his animals’ welfare, he knew at all times about where his buffaloes were grazing. He soon realized that they were increasing at a rapid rate: and after he returned from each daily ride on the range, he reported, ‘It is well.’”

Pablo learned in 1906 that the Flathead reservation was opening to homesteaders and he would lose his free range.

Buffalo purchase refused by Congress

Pablo immediately wrote forest service personnel asking if they could provide grazing land for his buffalo. But after much waiting for a reply, he gave up.

He then hurried to Washington and offered to sell his 300 buffalo to the U.S. government for $200 each.

View of Pablo’s buffalo on their home range in the Flathead valley. Spurned by US Congress. Montana Historical Society, NA Forsyth.

President Theodore Roosevelt approved the idea, as did Secretary of the Interior L.A. Hitchcock. But when they asked Congress to appropriate money, it was refused.

The US legislators in Congress said the price was too high. Some scoffed that the buffalo were not worth more than $15 each.

Many easterners agreed. The Indianapolis Star took an indignant stand against the purchase:

“Why Boston people should take an interest in the buffalo and why any intelligent persons should care for the preservation of these moth eaten, ungainly beasts, when their room might much better be taken up by modern blooded cattle, beautiful to look at, are conundrums no one answered.”

Barnaby said his father-in-law took the refusal hard, and described Pablo’s tears of disappointment at the news.

“When Pablo heard that our Congress could not be induced to appropriate a purchasing fund, he was moved to manly tears. He knew that free, open range was ending and that beloved herd must go,” said Barnaby.

Canada eager to purchase Plains Buffalo

 Living not far from the Canadian border, Pablo then requested land from the Canadian government to graze his buffalo.

He knew Canadians were upset that all their Plains buffalo had been gone for years. Remaining in the far north were an estimated 200 or so of the elusive Wood Buffalo.

But the Plains Buffalo had vanished entirely from Canada, many slaughtered by the big semi-annual Metis hunts. Only the few Plains bison rescued by Tonka Jim McKay that were being exhibited at Banff National Park remained.

Pablo’s Canadian contact was a Metis man he knew, Canadian emigration agent Alex Alyotte, stationed in Great Falls, MT.

After some quick checking with his superiors, Alyotte found they were eager to buy buffalo. Rather than to provide pasture, they offered to buy his entire herd at his price.

He arranged a deal with Pablo that meant his entire buffalo herd could be preserved in Canada.

The Canadian deal was clinched in three months, when Mr. Douglas, Commissioner of Canadian Parks, offered to take the whole herd, an estimated 600 head, at $200 each, with $120,000 for the whole consignment.

Delighted, Pablo signed the final agreement, which included another $45 per animal for shipping to their new home near Wainwright, Alberta.

He closed the deal in March 1907.

After the deal was made, an embarrassed Congress was shamed by the press for insulting Pablo with their offer of $15 a head.

“We lost a chance at Bison, offered only $15 a head for Animals Worth $200!” accused a headline in the Harrisburg Telegraph, Pennsylvania.2

“Recently the Canadian Government, by a striking coup d’eta, secured the greatest herd of bison in captivity,” declared the Pennsylvania newspaper.

“And by returning them to an immense preserved tract in their native haunts on the plains of the great West have arrested natural extinction with such complete success that within a few years they anticipate possessing a huge herd of these animals.”

“The story of how this deal was consummated,” said a writer in the December Wide World Magazine, and how the United States lost a great opportunity of becoming possessed of one of the finest animal attractions in the world constitute an interesting romance.

“[Pablo] decided to offer the whole stock, just as it was, to the authorities, hurried to Washington and expressed his readiness to sell. The Government offered to relieve him of his stock at $15 per head. Pablo refused hotly and laughed out the parsimonious offer.”

Apparently, when it was too late, some Americans tried to change Pablo’s mind. But he stuck to his end of the bargain, and was praised for it by the Canadian buyers.

Tackling the Buffalo Round-up

Still, problems lay ahead. At first Pablo thought he might trail his buffalo all the way to their Canadian destination. But he quickly learned that his half-wild buffalo did not trail well, even for  short distances.

Their eventual contract called for Pablo to deliver the buffalo to the railhead at Ravalli, Montana, where they could be loaded on railroad cars and shipped to Canadian destinations. The loaded railroad cars would need to be switched onto 5 separate railway lines to reach the Wainwright station in Sascatchewan.

These photos were taken by N.A. Forsyth during Pablo’s Montana roundup. The images are stereographs and produce a 3D effect when viewed through a stereograph reader. Round Up of the 2nd Herd of Pablo’s Buffalo. Montana Historical Society

Pablo’s buffalo—he thought there were somewhere between 300 and 700 head—were grazing in the Bitterroot Range and the Lolo National Forest along the Flathead River.

The first twenty cowboys he hired only succeeded in bringing in a few buffalo at a time, trailing them the 30 to 50 miles to the railroad pens and loading at Ravalli.

Before bringing in any buffalo, Pablo supervised construction and reinforcement of stout loading facilities at Ravalli. He strengthened corrals, built wings to direct the buffalo toward the chutes, installed water troughs and fortified rail cars with extra timbers. He also had high wagons built to bring in especially difficult bulls.

Michael Pablo, the Buffalo King, riding through his buffalo corral at the railhead in Ravalli. His stout, high corral fence can be seen at center back. On the horizon to the left, the wings stretch away into the distance above the corral, serving to direct the animals in toward the gate. Montana Historical Society

Wagons with high sides were built especially to haul difficult buffalo into Ravalli, one at a time.

The wagons brought the worst outlaws into the corral from their range some 30 or 40 miles away, thus avoiding the difficulty of chasing stubborn bulls that long distance.

View of Michel Pablo on his horse trailed by six wagons loaded with buffalo in wooden crates during the round-up and shipping of his buffalo herd to Canada. Montans Historical Society, NA Forsyth.

Cowboy artist Charlie Russell joined the Pablo crew for spring 1908 and fall 1909 roundups (Zontek) and described Pablo’s cowboys thus:

“The riders were all breeds and [full bloods], a wild looking bunch that looked good to me,” Charlie Russell wrote in a letter to his friend Fiddleback.

In the accompanying watercolor, Charlie painted 9 riders galloping across the Montana prairie, long dark hair flying.

They wore braids, cowboy hats, feathers, vests, long-sleeve shirts and bandanas. They sported western rigs, riding quirts, with colorful saddle blankets and mounted on an assortment of horses.

Russell also wrote of one of their buffalo roundups:

“The first day they got 300 in the whings [wings] but they broke back an all the riders on earth couldent hold them. They only got in with about 120.

“I wish you could have seen them take the river. They hit the water on a ded run . . .

“We all went to bed that night sadisfide with 120 in the trap but woke up with one cow.

”The rest had climed the cliff an got away. The next day they onely got 6, an a snow storm struck us an the round-up was called off till next summer.”  (The Buffalo Book, David A Dary.)

As he often did, Russell illustrated that letter–with a sketch of the wild buffalo taking the river.

In another letter, Charlie wrote,

“These bluffs wre nearly straight up and made a natural fence that would have held any cow on earth and from the looks I’d bet nothing without wings could have made the git away.

“But since I seen where they got out I wouldn’t bet what buffalo can’t do. They had 300 in the wings the first run but when they sighted the fence they split, running in all directions.

“And there ain’t no such thing as lieding a buffalo. He’l go through, under or over you, and a rider that runs in front of a buffalo is a green hand.” (Russell to Fiddleback, Jan 1909)

A New Plan and Pathetic Picture

An article in The Daily Missoulian written by F.L. Baghy explained the difficulties for the buffalo punchers, as well as the desperation of the buffalo and pathetic appearance of those captured.

“This spring it was decided to make no further attempt to drive the animals from Ronan to Ravailli, but to corral them, load them in crates mounted upon wheels and haul them over the mountains to the loading corrals. For this purpose heavy crates were constructed of heavy timber fastened together with steel and wire.

Roundup of some of the last of Pablo’s buffalo. Seven of Pablo’s buffalo wranglers bring in a bunch to load. At right is a convoy of the high wagons that were built especially to haul difficult buffalo into Ravalli, one at a time. Montana Historical Society.

“Through a loading chute the animals were driven into these crates, securely roped in and hauled by means of six and eight-horse teams over the long and dusty journey to Ravalli. Here they were turned out into a series of corrals from which they were driven, one at a time, into the loading chute.

“A noose around each buffalo’s neck and the tugging of a score of men landed the animal in his car, where the struggling beast was held until a partition to separate him from his companions could be firmly put into place.

“The dangers attending the work of handling the buffalo were many and there were numerous narrow escapes from death and injury on the part of riders and loaders.

“Fred Decker had his horse gored under him, and his brother Johnnie Decker, twice had his mount gored and was slightly injured, his life being saved only by the prompt action of Pablo and his brother in firing pistol bullets into the neck of an infuriated beast that was trying to kill man and horse.

“In their maddened struggles against being dragged into captivity 20 of the animals were killed, some of them rushing blindly against the sides of the corrals with such force as to break their necks. One, the patriarch of the herd, fought with a younger bull, then lay down in the loading chute and died.

“It was a pathetic picture to one who stopped to think, as he gazed at the lacerated, bleeding, ragged animals that stood in the corral at Ravalli, gazing longingly through the cracks of the high, strong fences out upon the hills, beyond which lay the wild free range from which they had been dragged in ignominious captivity to be loaded Into cramped stalls of railroad cars, there to be left to vent their fury in vain kicks against the walls of their prisons until steam and steel landed them at their new home.

“Slowness in hauling the bison from the round-up corral necessitated some of the animals standing in the cars for eight days before the last train started for Canada.

“At last all of the shipments save those that were killed and two that escaped were loaded, aboard and the long trip of 1,200 miles to the point of unloading was commenced.

“Canada has secured a bargain in buffalo and the United States has lost an asset which it may never be able to replace.”

Out of 10 bulls, only 3 loaded—4 died

Moving half-wild renegade buffalo bulls proved almost impossible. David Dary describes Pablo’s attempt one day to load ten full-grown bulls in boxcars, using three expert ropers on well trained horses.

Success: loading the last buffalo on the Northern Pacific at Ravalli.

Four of the bulls died from the furious exertion of their resistance during the day’s heat. Three grew sullen, lay down before they reached the rail cars and refused to budge, regardless of how hard they were pulled, pushed and prodded.

Of the ten bulls the cowboys succeeded in loading only three.

Some of Pablo’s outlaw buffalo, Charlie Russell wrote, avoided capture “without fear or respect for horse, man, rope or fence.

“If overtaken and roped, they threw the horse and his rider and went off with the rope.”

Pablo’s last seven buffalo—perhaps the wildest of all—were hauled to the railroad one at a time in special high-sided wagons built to hold one buffalo each.

Pablo planned to sponsor hunts by local people for the outlaw bulls that escaped the roundup.

But Montana’s Attorney General intervened by declaring them safe under Montana law. So instead, poachers took over and quickly dispatched every last one of them.

First published July 14, 2020

The Buffalo Hunt: The History & Culture of the Spirit Lake Dakota

by Louis Garcia of Tokio, ND

Louis Garcia, honorary tribal historian for the Spirit Lake Nation, teaches carpentry at the Cankdeska Community College at Fort Totten, ND. He is the author of “Grass Dance of the Spirit Lake Dakota,” published by Cankdeska Community College. It is available in the college bookstore and at www.writtenheritagebooks.com. He writes a column in the Benson Country Farmers Press entitled; A Message From Garcia: The History and Culture of the Spirit Lake Nation, and has written about 120 of these feature stories. Garcia is married to Hilda Redfox. A tribal member for 48 years, and 3rd generation Dakota Presbyterian Church Elder, she is employed by the Tribal health Department. They have a son Robert age 44 and a grandson Chandler and live near Tokio, ND on Spirit Lake Reservation.

Louis Garcia and his wife Hilda Redfox of Tokio, ND, married for 48 years. Photo courtesy of author.

For the Plains Indian nothing is more exciting and exhilarating than hunting buffalo or more enjoyable than feasting on their flesh. (1)

To the Plains Indian the buffalo was the source of life; this bovine scientifically called a Bison (Bison bison) provided everything required to exist in a plains environment. Every part of the buffalo was utilized including their excrement which was used for fuel.

The Dakota term for a buffalo hunt is Wanasapi which appears to be contraction of a descriptive name. During the period named Dog Days, before the coming of the horse, when dogs were used as burden carriers, the hunt was more individualized.

Hunters would don a wolf hide and crawl on all fours up to the herd. Buffalo have poor eyesight and depend on their sense of smell. As there were always wolves prowling nearby, the hunters would go unnoticed. (2)

Larger groups of hunters employed a Park, which was a fenced enclosure or by driving a herd over a precipice called a jump.

With the arrival of the horse circa 1685 (3) and shortly thereafter by the white man, the herds of buffalo began to decline.

The beginning of this decline is attributed to disease (4) by some writers (although this was disputed by Theodore Roosevelt (5)) and later overhunting. Buffalo herds were increasingly harder to find.

The threat from the Canadian Métis from the Winnipeg-Pembina area, who also hunted in large groups; and according to Indian territorial rights were trespassing on Dakota tribal lands.

These mixed race people increased the pressure brought upon the buffalo population.

One of the last of the large buffalo hunts occurred in 1882, the year known as “Wableza Lakota ob wanasapi waniyetu,” the year Major James McLaughlin went on a buffalo hunt with the Lakota and Nakota. (6)

Crazy Walking was the hunt leader and Running Antelope the camp crier. (7) The location of this hunt was in Adams County, North Dakota along Flat Creek Cannahma Wakpala. (8)

The plains people were always on the move, when the herds moved they moved.

The Dakota /Lakota would have two large hunts a year, once in the spring and once in the fall. In the spring, the hunt was usually held in April.

Later on the people gathered for their annual tribal Sun Dance Ceremony in late June and then dispersed to gather other sources of food such as berries, nuts, and tubers. Deer, elk hunting, and also fishing supplemented their diet.

In late September they gathered again for the fall hunt. The Dakota / Lakota spring and fall hunts which were termed “running buffalo,” were an elaborate affair full of prayer, ceremony, and symbolism.

During the buffalo hunt and in time of war the large camp came under marshal law.

A prominent family was selected to set up a tent in the Cokayata or center of the camp. It was a great honor for a family to give up their home. This tent became tribal headquarters called a Tiyotipi or Tent of Tents. No menstruating woman could go near this now consecrated council tent.

Each family had a designated camping location with in the circle of tents. If the camp was exceedingly large then the Tiyotipi was made larger by pitching two or three tents together called a Tiyokiheya.

Ten men were selected as leaders of the hunt or times of war named Wicaŝtayataŋpi— Honored men. They were chosen by unimus decision as they could have no blemish on their reputation.

They became the Wayacopi or judges. These ten men made sticks about six to eight inches long and a finger in thickness which they gave to each man in the camp.

These Canwayawapi or counting sticks were used to determine the number of men in the camp. Each man painted his stick red with iron oxide if he was without war honors, and black with charcoal if he had war honors.

These counting sticks were later used to keep score in the Moccasin Game, which was played to while away the time waiting for the scouts to return.

The ten Honored Men selected four marshals called Akicita to keep order, selecting one as the leader Akicita Itancan. These men were the enforcers of the orders given by the ten chiefs.

These men wore black stripes on their face to show who they were, distinguishing themselves from the others. They were very strict in carrying out their duties.

Any man disobeying the chief’s orders were Akicita kte or Soldier Killed, meaning the offender was punished by being whipped, his horse or dog killed, bow and arrows or gun stock broken, all depending on the severity of the offence.

Sometimes they even cut up his tent and broke the poles. This action was a double punishment as the lodge was owned by his wife, which would bring down upon him his wife and in-laws wrath. The Akicita even had authority over the Ten Hunt Leaders, all the camp was under their jurisdiction.

A  Eyanpaha or Camp Crier was selected to circuit the camp making known the decisions of the ten chiefs.

Most times the individual selected as Announcer was known by everyone as the best man for the job. Naturally he had to have a strong-loud voice to be heard as he circled the camp repeating the commands.

To act as servants or waiters to the Tiyotipi; two virgin boys were selected called Wayuţaŋpi Touchers, who bring the firewood, cook and serve the food, and perform the sundry of duties required to keep the council tent running smoothly.

The fire in the Council tent was kept continually burning.

Two scouts Tuŋweyapi were now appointed. According to Rev. Riggs one was called Wakcanya or locator, and the other Wayeya One Sent. (9)

The scouts were selected from the best families, known for their dedication to duty. The relatives of all who were selected gave away to the poor for this great honor.

The two scouts were each given a wolf skin as a badge of office, with great ceremony. The head of the wolf was tied on their heads being secured by a thong around the chin. The wolf’s body hung down their back. The wolf hide was worn so as not to alarm the buffalo if they were detected.

Left: Louie Garcia in dance regalia. He began Native American dancing as an 11-year-old with the Boy Scouts. Center: Dale Perkins, student in Louie Garcia’s carpentry class at Cankdeska Community College, Fort Totten, ND , shows his handmade project, a 4-drawer chest of drawers. Right: Justin Azure stores computer equipment and supplies in the bookcase he made in carpentry class at Cankdeska Community College. Photos courtesy of author.

Song of Departure
Eca ozuye kinhan (In war usually)
Tuweniwalakeŝni ca (I will never be seen)
Bliheiçiya waun welo. (I do the best I can). (10)

The two scouts scattered out going in separate directions. Sometimes they were out twelve days before they found the herd.

If as it happened on occasion, they found nothing, they sulked back to camp attracting as little attention as possible.

The scouts looked for Tumble Bugs also known as ground beetles whose horns always pointed towards the buffalo. The large grass hopper was also a sign buffalo were near.

As soon as the scouts departed, the camp moved to the next predetermined camp location. As the general direction was known to all, the returning scouts could easily find the camping location.

As soon as the scout was sighted in the distance and by his movements indicated that a pteoptya (herd) was sighted, the people became excited. A long stick was planted in front of the Tiyotipi or a pile of buffalo dung.

The camp leader painted himself red all over. Two lines of men assembled in front of the Tiyotipi with the ten chiefs seated within.

All was now ready. As the scout came near he ran in a zigzag pattern, calling out “Co-o, co-o.” He ran between the two lines of men and kicked over the stick or scattered the buffalo dung.

As he arrived at the Tiyotipi whose cover was pulled to the side so all could see inside; the ten seated chiefs raised their open hands and placed their palms on the ground crying hi-hi.

The hunt leader rose and taking his pipe placed a pinch of powdered buffalo dung on top of the tobacco in the pipe bowl. He lit the pipe with a coal from the fire and prayed to the four directions thanking God for the scouts find.

After the pipe was puffed on by the scout it was passed to the other nine hunt chiefs. A second pipe is presented in the same manner as the first.

Being presented with two pipes to smoke was an admonition to the scout to Wowicaķeya, truthfully report his discoveries.

The scout made his report as to the number and location of the herd, with his clenched fist and protruding thumb he pointed to the herd’s direction. This method of pointing with the thumb was the sign for a buffalo in the sign language (11).

Based on the information the hunt leaders then had to decide their course of action. If the scout reported only a small herd after days of scouting, they may choose to send the scouts out again (12).

After a decision is made the Announcer was instructed to announce to the people that a herd was found and to prepare to move camp as directed.

A typical announcement:
Aķin iyakaŝka (Saddle Bind)
Śiçeca teĥike (Children dear)
Anpetu Hankeya (Half a day)
Ecawaĥan kta ce. (I will kill). (13)

The camp was in a jovial mood and buffalo hunting songs were heard though out the camp (14). Their prayers to God had been answered.

The camp was moved to a great distance from the herd, so as not to alarm them.

The Akicita gathered the hunters, giving them instruction and selecting those who would go with the two designated groups.

The hunters often rode a common horse, but switched to a trained horse used mostly for buffalo hunting. These horses were trained to run next to a fleeing buffalo.

Sometimes women would follow at a distance to assist in the butchering. With the scouts in the lead, the hunters approached in two arcs, one on each side with a gap in the middle, but to the rear down wind from the herd.

The hunt was usually started very early in the morning. Once the hunters were in position, all waited for the signal.

Sometimes a hunter may rush forward in his excitement upon seeing the herd. This action would start the buffalo to stampede before everyone was ready and the success of the hunt would be in jeopardy.

If all was lost, the offender would be whipped, and horse and hunting equipment destroyed right on the spot by the Akicita. Everyone knew the rules, the hunters kept their places until the prearranged signal was given.

At the signal, such as a blanket being waved from a visible location, the two arcs of hunters rushed forward. The hunters were primarily interested in the cows’ pte, especially two-year-olds. They were the easiest to tan into robes and tents.

The bulls Tatanka ran on the outside protecting the cows and calves ptehinzicana.

The weapon of choice is the bow and arrow, but the lance was also employed. Each hunter had identifiable colors and marks on their arrows; it was easily made known who made the kill.

The hunter would ride next to the cow and shoot an arrow behind the shoulder blade into the heart. He then rushed on to the next prey.

This was very dangerous work as the buffalo could turn and gore the horse, unseating the hunter to be injured or trampled to death by the fleeing buffalo. (15)

Young men who were inexperienced would trail behind killing the strays. Young boys on their first hunt would chase after the calves.

Their first kill was celebrated by the family to honor the young hunter and encourage him for future exploits. This honoring continues today on the reservation with the first deer and first fish celebrations.

Once the buffalo disappeared in the distance, the men began to locate their kills.

One tradition of the men was to remove the liver, squeeze some gall on it and eat it raw.

Old men who were unable to hunt anymore brought up the common horses to transport the hides and meat back to the camp. The hunters usually gave these old men a buffalo or part of one to honor them for their service to the people.

The men proceeded to butcher their kill until their wives could arrive to help.

The buffalo were butchered in a prescribed age-old way, learned from hundreds of years of experience. The method of butchering is described by Heĥakawakita (Looking Elk) from the Standing Rock Reservation. (16)

As the pack horses began to arrive in camp, the processing of the meat was begun.

The hides were staked out to dry, the meat cut into thin strips called Papa, to be dried for future use. (17)

Cooking fires were all ablaze for everyone wanted fresh meat.

Fresh meat was brought to the Tiyotipi to feed the ten chiefs. The two boys cooked the meat and served the meat in a special way.

A piece of cooked meat was impaled on a pointed stick and Wiyohnagwicakiya and placed into the mouth of each chief who gave thanks.

Once this ceremony was performed everyone could eat the freshly cooked meat.

Several days were required to process the buffalo. Usually some of the dried meat was deposited into cache pits to be saved for future use.

The tons of fresh meat had been dried, reduced to a trifling of the former weight dubbed Jerky.

Mostly the meat was made into Wasna (Pemmican) by pounding the dried meat into a powder and mixing it with dried Chokecherry, or June berries.

The mixture was then encapsulated in fat rendered from the marrow of the buffalo bones. The meat processed in this manner would last for years.

A number of years ago a cache of meat was discovered in the Pembina Hills and deemed safe to eat after 150 years.

The sacks of pemmican were placed into grass lined, bell shaped cache pits, its location hidden to all but the owner. (18, 19, 20)

Grass Dance of the Spirit Lake Dakota, written by Louis Garcia, was published by Cankdeska Community College. Available from the college bookstore.

Back cover of book Grass Dance of the Spirit Lake Dakota by Louis Garcia. Photos courtesy of author.

Glossary

Akicita – Policeman, soldier, enforcer, sergeant at arms.

Akicita Itancan – Police Chief (Itancan=leader, captain).

Akicita Kte – Punishment by the police, Soldier Killed (Kte=to kill).

Buffalo Hunt – The last hunt of 1882 (Wableza=Inspector; Lakota= Sioux; Ob=both; Wanasapi=buffalo hunt; Waniyetu=winter time). By winter they are referring to the year in which the event occurred. The hunt actually happened in the summer. 5,000 buffalo were killed.

Cannahma Wakpala – HiddenWood Creek, (Can=wood; Nahma=to hide;  Wakpala=creek in the Lakota dialect). Named Flat Creek  by the railroad because the area is quite flat (Berg). Riviere du Bois Cache of the Métis. The creek is 50 miles long, rising in North Dakota and flowing southeast to join the Grand River a few miles below the junction of the north and south branches in Perkins County, South Dakota.

Canwayawayapi – Counting sticks (Can=wood, stick; Wayawa=to count: Yapi=causative).

Cokayata – The center of the camp circle. (Cokaya=center; [A]ta= at the). Eyanpaha  Announcer, camp crier, speaker (Eyan=speak to; Paha= hill) meaning his voice had to be so loud it would reach the distant hills.

Papa – Dried meat, jerky. In modern times this treat is mixed with sugar.

Park – an enclosure in the shape of a keyhole, two wings allow the buffalo to be driven in and the gate closed. This is the origin of the name Park River, a western tributary of the Red River of the North located in Walsh County, North Dakota.

Ptehinzicana – Buffalo calf (Pte=cow; hin=hair; Zica=yellow like; Na=familiarity). A calf is a buffalo with yellow like hair.  Sometimes pronounced as ptehincana.

Pteoptaye– Buffalo Herd (Pte=cow; Optaye=herd). The general name for buffalo in Indian is a cow—Pte, not as usually stated Tatanka (Ta=ruminating split toe animals; Tanka, =big, large) which means the bull.

Tiyokeheya– Enlargement of the council tent by joining two or three tents together. Ti=tent; [I]yokeheya=add to, an addition)

Tiyotipi – The Council Tent, the dwelling place of the council in the center of the camp circle. The tent of tents. (Ti=house, tent; Yo=in, at, on; Tipi=dwelling).

Tuŋweyapi – Scouts, spies (Tuŋweya=scout; Pi=plural).

Wakcanyan – Locator, Reporter.

Wanasapi – Buffalo Hunting (Wanasa=buffalo hunt [probably a contraction]; Pi=plural).

Wasna – Powdered meat, fruit and grease mixed together, commonly referred to as Pemmican.

Wayacopi – Judges (Wa=noun marker; yaco=to judge; Pi=plural).

Wayeya – Hunt, seeker.

Wayutaŋpi  – Waiter, food touchers (Wa=noun marker; Yutaŋ=to   touch; Pi=plural) two virgin boys.

Wicaŝtayataŋpi – Hunt and war chiefs, ten men were selected (Wicaŝta=  man; Yataŋ=to praise; Pi=plural. There was no one who was the chief of the tribe. This change in government came  during the treaty making era with the United States  government.

Wiyohnagwicakiya – Put food into the mouth. (W[o]=abstraction; I=mouth; Yo =in, at, on; Hnag [contraction of hnake] to place; Wica=  them; Kiya=causative).Wowicaķeya = Truthfully, factually.

Bibliography

1.Deloria, Vine Junior . Singing for a Spirit: A Portrait of the Dakota Sioux. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers 1999, p115.

2.Catlin, George. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians. Volume One. New York: Dover Publications 1973, Plate 110.

3.Cowdrey, Mike; Martin, Ned and Jody. Horses, Bridles of the American Indian.  Nicasio, CA: Hawk Hill Press 2012, 14-15.

4.Koucky, Rudolph W. M.D. The Buffalo Disaster of 1882. North Dakota History 50 (1) 1983: 23-30

5.Berg, Francie M. Buffalo Heartbeats Across the Plains. Dakota Buttes Visitors Council, Hettinger, ND 2018, 68. When homesteader RM Bunn wrote of his disease theory, upon finding a cluster of old whitened buffalo bones, President TR Roosevelt wrote to him: “I am very sorry not to agree with your reasoning. I was an eye-witness to the extermination of the buffalo. It was due to the number of hunters—partly by red men but chiefly by the whites. Nothing else was any real factor. The man with the rifle was the sole, appreciable, active factor.”

6.Berg. Buffalo Heartbeats, 2028, 55. The last 1,200 wild buffalo were slaughtered Oct. 12 and 13, 1883, by Sitting Bull and his band on the Great Sioux Reservation in what is now South Dakota, according to William Hornaday in his 1889 book The Exterimination of the American Bison.

7.Densmore, Frances. Teton Sioux Music Bulletin 61. Smithsonian Institute, Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Printing Office 1918: 436-447.

8.Berg. Buffalo Heartbeats, 2018, 10-25. The Great Hiddenwood Hunt. Also personal communication, 2005.

9.Riggs, Stephen R. Dakota Grammar, Texts, and Ethnography. Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, Inc 1973: 200-202.

10.Densmore, 108.

11.Clark, W. P. The Indian Sign Language. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1982:83.

12.Densmore, 441.

13. Riggs, 202.

14.Densmore, 440-442.

15.Catlin 26, Plate 9; 254, Plate111.

16.Densmore, 443-444.

17.Laubin, Reginald, Laubin, Gladys. The Indian Tipi: its History, Construction, and Use. Norman; University of Oklahoma Press 1977: 150.

18. Gilman, Carolyn, Mary Jane Schneider. The Way to Independence: Memories of a Hidatsa Indian Family 1840-1920. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press 1987: 19, 22.

19. Koucky. Old Names for Buffalo Meat, North Dakota History 50 (4) 1983: 16, 17.

20.Wilson, Gilbert L. Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians: An Indian Interpretation. St. Paul:  Minnesota Historical Society Press 1987. Lowie, Robert H. Dance Associations of the Eastern Dakota. New York: American Museum of Natural History 1913: 132-137.  McLaughlin, James. My friend the Indian. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company 1926: 97-116. Olden, Sarah Emilia. The People of Tipi Sapa: The Dakotas. Milwaukee: Morehouse Publishing Co. 1918: 97-104. Standing Bear, Luther. My People the Sioux. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1975: 49-66. Land of the Spotted Eagle. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1978: 76-78.

First published June 30, 2020

Return of Wild Buffalo to Banff National Park - Part 2

by Francie M. Berg

By January 2019, the buffalo at Banff had been free-roaming for 5 months, after being released from their small enclosed pasture in the remote Panther Valley. They are being tracked and monitored by the Banff bison scientists with the help of GPS collar data, remote cameras and field observations.

The buffalo choose to spend summer months at high elevations and the shores of alpine lakes. With the cooler days of fall they came down to lower levels where grazing was good. Courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park

After their release, they spent their summer months at high elevations—along talus slopes and shores of alpine lakes. Then with the cooler days of fall, they came down to lower elevation meadows for excellent grazing on the grassy slopes and areas that were control-burned in the Panther and Red Deer valleys.

It takes two days for park rangers to get to these remote pastures on foot, ski or horseback, for observations on site.

“It is incredible to see these animals thriving in the wild after an absence of 140 years,” the Banff team reported. “With each passing day, they continue to prove that bison really do belong in Banff National Park.”

Since July 2018 the Banff herd has been free-roaming. The Red Deer and Cascade Expansions were opened (blue areas), with drift fencing (red), close monitoring and hazing if needed to encourage the buffalo to stay within the desired areas (green and blue). Image courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

The 10 cows calved twice in the Soft-Release Pasture in Panther Valley—in the spring of 2017 and 2018—to help them feel at home in the mountains. This increased the herd by over 50%, bringing the total to 36, adding 20 calves to the original 16 adults brought from the plains of Elk Island National Park.

 High-Tech Meets Wilderness—Parks Canada Learns from the Herd

The Banff Bison Team is highly committed to educating the public about the many aspects of the reintroducing the buffalo to remote areas of the Canadian Rocky Mountains where they lived 140 years ago.

1.They emphasize the ecological and conservation benefits that bison can bring to change the landscape and enrich plants and animals.

2.They are committed to helping indigenous people of the area renew their cultural and historical connections with the animals their ancestors once hunted here.

3.They are committed to increasing opportunities for Canadians and visitors to learn about the ecological and cultural importance of this iconic animal that once held such importance for Native people and early settlers in the area.

The staff is invested in helping Native people renew their cultural and historic connections with the buffalo that their ancestors once hunted here. Courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

Canadians, and indeed, people throughout the world both adults and children are urged to follow the Banff buffalo herd online and to participate in related activities.

“Follow the herd from home! See what life is like for the calves by watching our new webisode on YouTube. Share it with your friends and family on social media,” they challenge.

We can all connect by following their Bison Blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts, a YouTube web series, and attending fun interpretive programs in the Banff townsite and day-use areas. Live or online.

Following are reports from 2019 and 2020 Blogs:

“The return of bison to Banff National Park is an exciting experiment in a giant natural laboratory. To observe the herd as they reintegrate into the ecosystem, our scientists use remote technology that allows us to collect information without disturbing the animals.

“Here are some of the tools we use to monitor the herd and what the research reveals.”

The team monitors buffalo herd with long-distance scopes and other high-tech equipment. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

1–Herd tracking

“We rely on GPS radio collars as our most essential tool to monitor herd movements. Before we released the herd into the wild, we collared all the adults. The collars beam location information via satellites to a web platform that our team can access from the office.

Staff riding into the remote area of Panther Valley with pack horses. It takes two days to get there via horseback—or skiing or on foot—from any direction. Courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

Panther Valley is located in one of the most remote parts of the park. It takes two days to get there on foot, ski or horseback from any direction.

“The collar data tells us about how the animals adapt to their new home and the type of habitat they prefer. We closely observe which animals travel together, and for the most part, they have all been travelling as a large group with some side adventures along the way.

“The collars give us insight into how bison interact with other species. For a few months, we watched with curiosity as collared wolves came to investigate and the bison stood their ground.

“Unfortunately, we only observed a few interactions before the wolves ventured outside of the park boundaries where they were legally trapped and killed. We also recently collared 10 bighorn sheep within ‘bison country’ to gather information about how bison affect sheep movements and habitat use.

“Collars allow us to pinpoint the location of the herd when we are in the field. Our scientists use a radio telemetry receiver to pick up the unique signal of each collar. Then, they can approach the herd from a safe distance to record data on behaviour, herd health and number of animals.

“Unfortunately, the collars have a limited lifespan, and many of the original collars have naturally dropped off—leaving 6 operational collars. We plan to recollar at least 3 animals this winter to maintain the vital flow of data about the herd.”

2 – Remote cameras

“Banff’s bison travel through rugged country that is difficult to access, and they are sensitive to human presence. That is where another important piece of technology comes in: remote cameras.

“Our network of remote cameras captures the secret life of the herd. We set them up along trails we know the animals use. When an animal passes by, it triggers a sensor and captures a photo or video.

“Images from remote cameras reveal information that would be difficult to observe in person, such as detailed health observations. Remote cameras also capture some special moments that would otherwise go unseen, like this photo of three generations of the herd all in one frame.

“Our network of remote cameras captures the secret life of the herd. We set them up along trails we know the animals use. When an animal passes by, it triggers a sensor and captures a photo or video.

“Images from remote cameras reveal information that would be difficult to observe in person, such as detailed health observations. Remote cameras also capture some special moments that would otherwise go unseen, like a photo of three generations of the herd all in one frame.”

3- Scat sampling

“Wherever bison roam they leave behind bison dung, a stinky but important clue that tells us what they are eating.

“As part of a long-term monitoring program, our scientists collect dung samples from the field. We analyze the samples in the lab to track the types of plants the bison have been eating. The data helps us learn about the Banff bison diet and the type of habitat they need to thrive.”

4 – Bird monitoring

“If you see a bird soaring above you in some of Banff’s most remote valleys, a bison may have helped raise it! Birds and bison have a special relationship. Some birds, like the Brown Headed Cowbird, co-evolved with bison to pluck bugs from their back.

“Others, like the Olive-sided Flycatcher, use fuzzy bison wool to line their nests. Bison also increase grassland habitat that benefits meadow-loving birds.

“To assess the effects of bison on birds, we monitor bird populations both inside and nearby the bison reintroduction zone. By recording birdsong in the same places each spring, we track changes in species diversity and distribution.

“This non-invasive method gives us a greater understanding of the cascading impacts of returning a keystone species to the ecosystem.

“Our research in the backcountry of Banff National Park is on the leading edge of conservation science. As one of only 8 wild herds in North America, what we learn from the Banff bison herd benefits the broader world of bison conservation.”

February 2019: One Lonesome Buffalo

“When the bison herd crossed the threshold between captivity and freedom in the wilderness of Banff National Park, it was a historic moment for conservation.

“It was also the start of what has since become a solitary life for one of the herd’s bulls—bull #18— in one of Banff’s remote valleys. This blog traces his journey since the herd was released.

“The herd is spending its first morning in the wild, high on a talus slope. #18 initially grazes alongside the herd but soon breaks from the group and continues northwards, leaving the rest of the herd to meander the ridges of the Snow Creek Valley in search of alpine plants.

Number 18, a lonesome bull wanders alone for months. He weaves his way between willow bushes, naps at high alpine lakes and trudges through thick forest. Will he continue his solo journey thru Banff’s remote valleys? Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“Edging across the slopes, #18 weaves his way between willow bushes and ambles down an old trail into the Red Deer Valley. For days, he explores meadows in the valley bottom. He picks through pockets of vegetation in an old burned forest.

“He eventually travels east, like the herd’s 2 other lone wandering bulls, but unlike them, he bumps into a stretch of fencing at the park boundary and returns westward. It would be the only interaction with a fence he has for the next 6 months.

“On his westerly trek back into the heart of the reintroduction zone, he turns north to follow Divide Creek. Along the way, he naps at an alpine lake and trudges through thick forest. He finally arrives in the Clearwater Valley in early September.

“This area is within the park but outside the reintroduction zone, so we deploy our staff to apply gentle pressure to redirect his movements. These efforts work to get the momentum started, and within a couple of days, he returns to his frequent haunt—the old burn in the Red Deer Valley.

“In late September, #18 makes a surprise reunion back with the main herd that is grazing in the Panther Valley. For a few days, they travel in lockstep, and then they part ways once more. #18 plods his way back to the Red Deer Valley, alone.

“For months now, #18 has spent the majority of his time in the Red Deer Valley. According to our GPS data, he has crossed paths more often with the resident wolf pack than with other bison.

“It’s normal for bulls to separate from the herd during the winter months. Bulls of breeding age tend to rejoin the herd for mating season in late July and August. What is interesting about #18 is his contrast with other bulls.

“Upon arrival to Banff, he was the oldest bull, but according to our field observations, he was one of the least dominant bulls during the soft-release phase. Following the full-release, the 2 most dominant bulls left the project area and were removed from the project, while the other bulls have generally stayed with the main herd.

“Each passing season teaches us more about Banff’s bison. Data from #18 and the rest of the animals, gathered through GPS collars, remote cameras and field observations, will help us understand how they establish home ranges and what influences their movements.

Buffalo are sensitive to human presence. The network of remote cameras captures the secret life of the herd. Remote cameras capture some special moments that would otherwise go unseen. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“We are looking forward to the spring/summer to learn more about #18’s behaviour. Will he return to the herd for mating season or will he continue his solo journey thru Banff’s remote valleys? Stay turned for updates on their movements in the coming months.

[Later:] “On a recent trip into the backcountry, our staff observed the main herd grazing in the Red Deer Valley. Everything looked normal…until we noticed the adult bull was different.

“It was no longer Bull #4 (who had been with the main herd for over a year) but Bull #18—the lonesome buffalo we wrote about back in February 2018! After a year of self-exile, Bull #18 is making some new friends.”

November 2, 2019 – Walking with Bison

“Indigenous peoples have a historical and cultural relationship with bison that spans thousands of years. The reintroduction of bison to Banff National Park fosters reconnection of this important relationship, inspires discovery, and provides stewardship and learning opportunities.

“In summer 2019, Parks Canada led a group of youth filmmakers from Treaty 7 though the remote Red Deer Valley where bison roam once again. In partnership with the Banff Centre, these filmmakers from the Nakoda A/V Club and the Napi Collective created short films inspired by their experience.

 “This guest blog, written by Amber Twoyoungmen of the Nakoda A/V Club talks about the ‘making of’ and the significance of the return of bison to Treaty 7 Territory:”

“The Nakoda A/V Club is a group of young emerging Indigenous artists from the Bow Valley making films and animations about narratives that matter to us. We work together to help each other to get through tough times and to create opportunities for each other to express our stories.

The Parks Canada team led a group of youth filmmakers—emerging Indigenous artists from the Bow Valley—through the remote Red Deer Valley where bison roam once again. “We made a movie to help tell the story.” Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“In the fall of 2018 we learned about the Bison being reintroduced in Banff National Park. We saw the films that Parks Canada made about the project, and we thought about what we could add to the story.

“Bison matter to Nakoda because they were always part of this place. They belong here. Their presence is part of the Bow Valley, just as the presence of people is. At one time, Banff was understood by my people as a place of gathering, of trade, and of healing.

“We asked Parks Canada if we could help tell the story of the return of bison, and we were so happy they agreed! We invited out our neighbors, the Napi Collective from the Siksika Nation to tell stories too, because they belong here also.

“We gathered at Banff Centre to think about the stories we wanted to tell, and to learn about Bison. Some of our members got to go to the Red Deer Valley where the Bison live! When they came back, they told us about what is was like, and they’ll tell you too.”

Javan Twoyoungmen: “Being invited out to the backcountry of the Rocky Mountains was an incredible experience….The Rockies hold a precious history with the Nakoda people, walking the path my ancestors once took was a memorable experience one that I will never forget.”

Javan Two Youngman walked the path his ancestors took in the Banff backcountry. An experience “I will never forget.” Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

Iris Clarke: “I can honestly say it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I didn’t think I could hike that far. But it was the most rewarding too.”

Tashina Ear: “My experience hiking with the Parks Canada crew was very exciting but most of all, a great opportunity to learn with Parks Canada. Those very paths were also the same trails our Nakoda ancestors had walked through and I’ve never realized how hard they worked, and how long their days must have been. Our ancestors were so strong, and I want to be like them. I’ve been on simple little two-hour hikes but nothing compared to this! I’m greatly appreciative that I was given this opportunity to hike with Nakoda A/V Club members and the staff from Parks Canada.”

“After the hike, we made a movie. We used everything we learned, and everything we thought about to help tell the story we wanted to tell. As part of making that movie, we camped together, we hiked, we swam, and we went back to Banff to edit our work with the support of Banff Centre. Then we will be able to present what we made and what we learned as part of the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

“The project was such a great opportunity. Bison matter not just to us but also to lots of beings in the mountains. Parks Canada taught us about how Bison leave fur for nests, make indents for pools of water to grow, and help to create conditions for grasses to thrive.

“At one time, I might have learned this by watching the Bison here in the Bow Valley, and I’m sad that’s not the case anymore, but I’m so excited that some of our members did get to learn this way by hiking in the Red Deer Valley!

“That’s a connection to who we used to be, and who we might be again someday. In the future, our story will include all the new people in the Valley too, just as this part of our story is so intertwined with Parks Canada.

“It’s an honor to work on something important. We loved working with Parks Canada to tell the story of the return of bison to Banff. Like all our stories, it’s not meant to have an end, it’s meant to be re-told, and shared often, because in the sharing of stories we bring our gifts to the valley, just like the Bison leaves its fur for all the small birds.”

“Thank you to guest blog writer, Amber Twoyoungmen and to all of the participating filmmakers for sharing their stories with us.”

February 14, 2020: Banff’s First Wild Bison Death in 140+ Years

“We knew it was going to happen eventually: one of Banff’s bison has gone missing and, given its young age, we expect it died of natural causes.

“Back in late September, one of our staff noticed one of two bison calves born in the wild this past June was no longer with its mother and the rest of the main herd. Meanwhile, a smaller, much fuzzier and reddish calf was sticking close to another cow. Back in the office, a report was filed: one calf lost, another calf just born.

What became of the missing calf? Though sad, this first bison death is an indication of success. From this perspective, the calf still lives.” Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“More than a month passed before staff could train binoculars on the increasingly elusive herd and corroborate the observation. A few weeks later, images from one of our remote cameras confirmed the situation.

“What became of the missing calf? As scientists and conservation staff overseeing the reintroduction project, we’d love to know exactly what happened, but the vastness of the 1200 km2 reintroduction zone, coupled with the increasing wildness of the herd (the missing calf’s mother is not radio collared) means we probably never will.

“This is simply an example of nature taking its course within a healthy ecosystem. The calf may have died from a predation event, succumbed to an injury or simply died in this harsh mountain environment through exposure to many natural hazards including severe weather, steep terrain and challenging stream crossings.

“What we do know is that nature wastes nothing and this first natural bison death in over 140 years will be a gain for the ecosystem of Banff National Park.

“Dozens of scavengers, including pine martens, ravens, voles, coyotes, beetles—and maybe even a wolverine or bear—will have already converted a new but ancient kind of meat, sinew and bone into their own muscles and perhaps even growing fetuses.

“And next spring the grass will be a little lusher where the bison died and the birds will be a little more active, swooping down for the insects that will still be cleaning up the site, and salvaging the remaining tufts of bison hair which the birds will use to line their nests.

“Although sad, this first bison death is an indication of success for the reintroduction project; Parks Canada’s goal, from the beginning, has been to restore the missing roles and relationships of bison within the ecosystem, not just bring back a missing animal.

“Looking at it from this perspective, the calf still lives.”

Buffalo follow single file along the edge of the lake, high in the mountains above the tree line. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

Airlifting supplies deep into the remote country of Banff National Park. Staff prepares for drop from the helicopter high overhead, May 20, 2020. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

Links to Parks Canada information on the 5-year project that is returning Wild Buffalo to Banff National Park are as follows:

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/ab/banff/info/gestion-management/bison

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/ab/banff/info/gestion-management/bison/faq

https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/ab/banff/info/gestion-management/bison/blog

 Follow the landmark journey of returning North America’s largest land mammal to Canada’s first national park with the links below:

http://www.parkscanada.gc.ca/banff-bison

http://www.facebook.com/BanffNP

http://www.twitter.com/BanffNP

First published June 16, 2020

Returning Wild Buffalo to Banff National Park — Part 1

by Francie Berg

For over a century, Parks Canada has been leading the charge to restore wild bison in Canada.

One of its first ventures was the display buffalo herd placed in a small 300-acre paddock near Banff in 1885.

Canada’s oldest national park—Banff National Park—is near the mountain resort of Banff and Lake Louise.

Moraine Lake in Banff National Park. Above the tree line—at about 2,300 m (7,500 ft)—the rugged mountains here are primarily rocks and ice. Rivers cut through deep canyons. Photo courtesy of Brandon Jean

The scenery is spectacular, with rugged mountains rising on every side. The tree line is at about 2,134 m (7,000 ft), and above this is mostly rocks and ice.

Unlike other western mountain towns that focused on mining or agriculture, Banff was built as a tourist destination from the beginning. Planners for the Canadian Pacific Railroad built across Canada in 1885, discovered hot springs there and pronounced it tourist-worthy. The original Chalet Lake Louise was built on the lake shore in 1890.

At the time there were no roads. Only the transcontinental railway, towering Canadian Rockies, glaciers and rushing mountain rivers.

Now three to four million visitors come to the Banff area every year.

Thirteen of the early buffalo there were donated from the Bedson herd by Sir Donald A. Smith, Lord Strathcona, purchased from Samuel Bedson, warden of the prison near Winnipeg.

They originated with James McKay of Winnipeg, who rescued calves during Metis hunts in the western plains of Canada. Three more—two cows and a bull—were donated by Charles Goodnight from his Texas herd.

A display herd of buffalo at Banff was one of its early tourist attractions, beginning in 1885. It persisted there for over 100 years, but is now being replaced by free-roaming buffalo in the back country of Banff National Park. ©Parks Canada / Banff.

Buffalo were kept for over 100 years in a small enclosure near the railroad. Until 1997 the buffalo herd was a popular tourist attraction.

But it had served its purpose. It was time to move on.

The dream was always for free-roaming buffalo in the backcountry of Banff National Park, as in prehistoric days when they were hunted by indigenes people.

“Homecoming to Banff” planned

Twenty years went by before the 5-year restoration plan was ready.

The historic “Homecoming to Banff” was planned as a high-tech, scientific experiment producing a wealth of detailed research data.

One of the first questions Parks Canada personnel asked was: How do you get Plains buffalo to bond to a Rocky Mountain home?

Seasoned buffalo handlers were in agreement: Buffalo cows from the plains need to calve in the mountains before they will accept it as home. Otherwise, any self-respecting buffalo herd will travel until they reach a place they like—breaking down fences and trampling crops as needed to get there.

Cattle ranchers voiced concerns that buffalo would escape, damage property and spread disease to livestock. In response, the planners included a hazing zone, recapturing, and as a last resort destroying the animals. If they detect disease they agreed to cull the herd.

Goals of reintroduction

The reintroduction of bison to Banff brings back a keystone species that will:

• Support ecological integrity;

• Contribute to bison conservation since plains bison are only protected in three herds in less than 0.5% of their original range in Canada;

• Reconnect indigenous peoples and bison; and

• Create new opportunities for visitors and Canadians to learn about the ecological and cultural importance of bison.

Reintroduction of bison included a Blessing Ceremony with staff and Indigenous people in Banff National Park. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park

The Parks Canada five-year plan includes:

Year 1 and 2 (2017-2018) involved a soft-release in Banff National Park.
The soft-release plan includes bringing young pregnant cows with a few bulls to a desirable, but remote, mountain valley in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, where they’d give birth to their first calves under the watchful eyes of biologists.

Carefully selected, the young herd came from the disease-free, extensively-tested and vaccinated herd at Elk Island National Park, which is just east of Edmonton, Alberta, in the Great Plains.

They were to be held for “summer vacation” in a small enclosed pasture in remote Panther Valley and fed hay that first winter. The following spring they calved a second year in the small “soft release” pasture of their new home. Gradually fences and barriers were moved giving access to an increasingly larger area.

Years 3 to 5 (2018-2022) the herd will at last be free to range—free-roaming it’s called.
They will range through the east part of the park where they will continue to live year around from then on in a wild state. The barriers are let down between the initial area to the Red Deer and Cascade Rivers expansion. A larger “Hazing Zone”

The Panther and Dormer River Valleys in the eastern part of Banff National Park form the core of the initial reintroduction zone, spanning 1200 km2 (463 mi2; green). Within this is the small Soft Release Pasture System (green dot). During the 5 years the Red Deer and Cascade Expansions (blue) will be added. The Hazing Zone is yellow. Short stretches of wildlife-friendly drift fencing (red) encourage bison to stay within the reintroduction zone—and outside the hazing zone—while allowing other wildlife to pass safely in and out of the park. Map courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

The rangers at Parks Canada brought it all together just in time to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary year.

On April 25th, 2017, they loaded 16 buffalo—12 two-year-old females and four two-year-old bulls—into shipping containers on trucks in Elk Island National Park and trucked them to Banff National Park.

There each shipping container—containing three or four husky buffalo—was picked up by helicopter and, dangling through mountain valleys by a metal cable, called a longline, was airlifted to their new soft release pasture in the Panther River valley.

There in grassy river bottom lands the shipping containers were dropped gently down at the edge of the forest.

Parks Canada personnel opened the containers and the buffalo burst out on the run.

Sixteen buffalo were loaded in shipping containers at Elk Island National Park and trucked to the Banff park. A helicopter then airlifted the containers to the soft-release pasture in a remote part of the park where they were opened and the bison released. Video courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

It was a remarkable moment as the buffalo charged into the verdant green mountain valley, looked around and began eating.

Ten healthy bison calves were born in the soft release area of Banff National Park’s remote backcountry before the end of May.

The new calves brought the herd number to 26. They mingled with the herd, napping in the sun, running and playing together.

In July, the soon-to-be-wild herd was moved from their 6-hectare winter pasture into a 12-hectare (30 acre) summer pasture, which includes tasty mountain grass, instead of the dry hay they are used to.

They drank from a clear, flowing river, instead of a cattle trough, and for the first time ever faced mountains to climb and explore.

This was a big change for these young animals. There is no running water or steep hills to climb in the safe plains pasture where they grew up in Elk Island National Park.

These new arrivals represent the future of buffalo restoration in Banff. They are part of the larger vision to reintroduce wild bison, and their gradual introduction to the park will help this herd anchor to the landscape and adopt it as their new home.

The Parks Canada team is committed to involving the public in the buffalo reintroduction effort. A well-considered, illustrated blog provides students and adults with fascinating details.

People throughout the world are being urged:

“Follow the herd from home! See what life is like for the calves by watching our new webisode on YouTube. Share it with your friends and family on social media.”

Herd dynamics—Cliques, leaders and rebels

“The herd arrived in Panther Valley in early February, and they’re settling into their new home. Part of that process is figuring out who’s who in the herd. We’ve been keeping a close eye on them and starting to notice personalities starting to form.

“In the past few weeks, Cow #12 has caught our attention. She’s normally the first cow to feed which could be a sign that she’s becoming a leader in the group. This is pretty exciting because bison tend to organize themselves into matriarchal societies. They are normally led by older females who know the way to the best food and watering holes.”

The soft-release bison pasture is located in one of the most remote parts of the park in Panther Valley. It takes two days to get there on foot, ski or horseback from any direction.

It takes two days to get to Panther Valley on foot, skis or horseback. The team takes turns staying in a nearby cabin, feeding hay, and monitoring the herd. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

Members of the Bison team take turns staying in a nearby cabin. They feed hay, monitor health and track each of the bison. Other tasks include chopping wood, wildlife observations, care of horses and checking remote cameras.

Blogging: Spring 2018

“On a chilly week in March our team of veterinarians and conservation specialists flew to the bison paddock in the remote Panther Valley of Banff National Park to start a big task: radio collaring the adult female bison and giving ear tag transmitters to their calves.

“May 6, 2018. Buffalo are already shaping the landscape. Called keystone species, or ‘ecological engineers,’ they alter the ecosystem around them and benefit a huge number of other creatures, just by their natural behavior.

“Expected benefits of grazing buffalo:

• More forest openings for meadow-loving birds and other small mammals.

• Well-fertilized grass for other grazers like elk and deer.

• More seasonal wetland habitat for amphibians due to bison wallows filling with water.

• A new food source for a community of creatures including bears, wolves, ravens, and coyotes.

“Horseback riders gently push the buffalo to help them explore key grazing area of their new home range. In April our core bison team travelled to Montana to get more practice in using the technique called ‘natural stockmanship,’ a low-stress approach to interacting with herd animals, like bison.”

In Montana they worked with experienced cowboys who handle over 1,000 buffalo, moving them periodically between pastures. The Banff team hit the road to practice low-stress handling skills they’d need to guide their own small buffalo herd to areas of good grazing.

Meanwhile the animals remained in the smaller enclosure until summer, when the gates would open.

“July 23, 2018. First two of new crop of calves have arrived. Bison calves are born with bright reddish fur – giving them the nickname of “little reds.” After a few months, they start to look more like the chocolate brown of their parents.

The cows calved twice within the fenced-in soft-release pasture to help them bond to the area. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“This is the herd’s second calving season in the soft-release pasture, and it’s one of the main ways we’re helping them bond to their new home range. Bison tend to return to the same areas to calve each spring. By holding them for two calving seasons in the heart of the reintroduction zone, we hope that the herd will adopt this area as their annual calving ground.

“August 2, 2018. Bison have returned to the backcountry of Banff National Park. For the past year and a half, Parks Canada has cared for the animals as they adapted to their new home in Panther Valley in a remote area of Banff National Park. They were held in a soft-release pasture to anchor them to the location and help prepare them for their new life in the mountains.

“Now, the bison are ready for the next phase: free-roaming. We released the herd from the soft-release pasture and bison are now free to roam a 1200 sq km reintroduction zone in Banff’s eastern slopes. They will start to fulfill their role in the ecosystem as a “keystone species,” by creating a vibrant mosaic of habitats that benefits bugs to birds to bears, and hundreds of other species.

“We will use GPS collars to track their movements across the landscape and their interactions with other native species. Over time, we hope to learn how bison integrate into the ecosystem and understand their impact on the surrounding landscape.

“At the end of the pilot project in 2022, we will evaluate the success of the project and determine the future of bison restoration in Banff.

“On July 29, 2018, we opened the fence of the soft-release pasture and released the herd to roam the 1200 sq km reintroduction area in Banff’s eastern slopes.

“We spent 1.5 years helping these animals learn to adapt to their new home. Now the tables have turned, and we have started to learn from them. They are already teaching us new things about what it means to be a mountain bison.

“On release day, we opened the gate around noon and waited for the bison to find the opening. And we waited. And finally, around midnight, we captured the herd on camera crossing the fence-line and moving through the release corridor we built for them.

“The next morning, we awoke to find the soft-release pasture empty. Bison had finally found their freedom. We sent our team into the field to monitor the herd using telemetry to trace their radio collar signals. When we picked up their signals, we were surprised with what we found.

Picking up the signals of the released collared bison, staff were surprised to find them high on the mountain side. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“Instead of following the valley bottom like we expected, the herd travelled and stayed high on the mountainsides, grazing and bedding in the uppermost fingers of vegetation that edge into the rocky slopes. We watched as they dipped down to the creek for a drink and then returned up the slope to bed down. Two pregnant cows then climbed even higher to an alpine lake where they gave birth to the first wild calves born to the free-roaming herd—bringing the herd to 33 animals. Two other cows with newborns summited a nearby ridge overlooking the soft-release pasture.

“This is a new experience for these bison, as they have never lived without fences. They are learning their new boundaries, getting their first views of the landscape before them, and testing their mountain legs.

Cows and calves raised with water tanks cross river for first time. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“The vast majority of the herd seem content within 6 km of the initial release site, while a few bulls have ventured into a nearby valley and one bison bull has left the core reintroduction area and is currently on Province of Alberta lands just east of the national park. We continue to follow his movements closely, and may try to capture him if this walkabout takes him further east.

“Almost a month after the release of 31 bison into Banff’s backcountry, the majority of the herd has remained within 15 kilometers of the release site.

“However, two bulls ventured eastward well beyond the park boundary and were within a day’s walk from private lands. Our reintroduction plan and commitments to provincial stakeholders, promised that we would keep bison out of these areas.

“We considered capture and relocation for the first bull, but concluded that it was not feasible due to several factors including:

• The speed at which the bull was moving east,

• The main herd was also travelling northeast into challenging terrain where hazing efforts would be less effective—we needed to focus resources on managing the main herd,

• Wildfires limited the availability of helicopters able to capture and transport an animal as big as a bison, while thick smoke reduced visibility, and

• We had to consider potential risks to the bison team in attempting to immobilize and move bison under these constraints.

“In the end, we made the tough decision to euthanize this first bull.

“Fortunately, several days later, we were able to successfully capture and relocate the second bull, to a temporary home in Waterton Lakes National Park. This was a very challenging operation that involved a contracted capture team netting the bison from a helicopter.

“We then immobilized it, and rolled it into a custom built bison-bag that allowed us to sling the immobilized bison under a large helicopter without compromising its airway, just long enough to lift it into a nearby horse trailer for transport.

“Decisions to relocate or destroy an animal are difficult for our team and are made only after we have considered all other options. These two bulls were determined to travel eastward past any obstacles in their way, and they taught us a lot. We have modified our herding techniques and have expanded some strategic drift fencing.

“September 27, 2018. The herd is currently doing well and staying high on the mountainsides to forage on fresh vegetation and stay out of reach of biting flies.

“Since we released the herd, at least 4 more calves have been born in the wild! The herd now consists of 10 adult females, 4 adult bulls, 10 yearlings, and now 9 calves, totaling 33 animals. These bison appear to be settling into their new home and all animals are within the core reintroduction area.

“The main herd has spent most of their time in the Snow Creek Valley following their release into the wild. They have been grazing, bedding and raising their calves at high alpine lakes and on mountain slopes in one of the most spectacular areas in Banff’s backcountry.

“We want to help them discover key areas in their new range so they will be aware of seasonal grazing opportunities throughout the reintroduction zone. One place we wanted to show the herd is the Lower Panther Valley—a landscape of rolling meadows that is snow-free most of the year and offers some of the best fall and winter grazing in the area.

The staff uses low-stress skills to gently encourage the herd to discover key areas in their new range which offer good fall and winter grazing. Photo by Dan Rafla, ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

“The team used the low-stress skills learned from the Montana cowboys, with a combination of staff on foot, horseback and helicopter to gently herd the animals south toward the Panther Valley.

“On September 4th, we successfully encouraged the herd to calmly walk about 15 km southwards; eventually ending up right back where they started—in the soft-release pasture.

“It was an incredible sight to see 27 bison walking single file along ridges, edging along talus slopes and winding through willows in the valley bottom.”

Winter scene of buffalo at edge of woods in Banff National Park, May 19, 2020. Photo courtesy of ©Parks Canada / Banff National Park.

First published June 9, 2020

Social Behavior: A Tale Too Marvelous to Go Untold

by Francie M. Berg

First publsihed May 12, 2020

Buffalo are social creatures. They like living together in herds.

But not just any herd. Their own herd. The one in which they know everyone else intimately. Usually they are relatives.

Cows with young calves, still red-gold hair. Buffalo like living in herds of animals that they know. Photo by F.Berg

And not too large a herd—30 to 60 seems a good size.

Except sometimes it’s the “bigger the better.” That happens in late July and August when historically the great herds came together for breeding season.

Professor Dale F. Lott writes that the relationships between bulls and cows become especially intense at that time. But that, however, the intensity is shifting and short-lived.

In his book American Bison: A Natural History, he describes the buffalo’s social behavior as “too marvelous a tale to go untold. The most complex relationships play out.”

It’s true. Who knew those sometimes sleepy-looking animals have such complexity and intensity in their relationships?

Maternal Herds—an older Grandmother Leads

For most of the year, the buffalo sort themselves into “cow groups” or maternal herds and “bull groups.”

The Vasquez de Coronado expedition exploring Texas in 1543 reported their surprise in seeing “innumerable herds of bulls without a single cow, and other herds of cows without bulls.” Kansas Historical Society.

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado travelled across the southwest as far north as Kansas following buffalo and Indian trails searching for gold. His great expedition of 300 soldiers and some 1,000 Indians often shot buffalo for food, but found no riches.

A soldier along on the expedition wrote of the buffalo they encountered in Texas in 1543, “We were much surprised at sometimes meeting innumerable herds of bulls without a single cow—and other herds of cows without bulls.”

Maternal herds include buffalo cows and calves and young bulls up to 2 or 3 years of age.

Cows and calves and young bulls live together in maternal herds. NPS.

An older grandmother is the usual leader of the herd. She leads them to water at the time that seems right to her.

When she bosses the others around and disciplines those who need it, that’s considered okay. It’s her job. They give her due respect, knowing she’s earned it.

Then there are the simpler, more lasting relationships between cows in a herd. Often they are related to each other. Mothers and sisters and aunts.

When they need help, a sister might come to help.

Cows are fiercely protective of their caves—and calves have a special relationship with their mothers. But once separated, that bond may be broken and the mother not return to her calf.

Mothers fiercely protect their calves. Photo by Chris Hull, SD Game, Fish and Parks.

Heifer calves stay long-term with their mother’s herd.

Bachelor Herds of Young Bulls

Bull calves are only allowed to stay in the herd with their mothers until they become too large and aggressive.

Then they are kicked out of the maternal herd to join bachelor groups that wander at some distance from the main herd.

In the wild herds of long ago, with roughly equal numbers of males and females, bachelor herds were known to be large.

Today in managed herds, young bulls are usually sold off long before they reach age three. They sell well in the market place, either as potential herd bulls or when slaughtered for meat.

In Indian tribal herds young bulls are especially desirable to provide meat for naming feasts and community gatherings. By giving of their meat, they honor the person celebrated, especially when the honored one is a young man.

Young bulls are usually sold to avoid over-grazing of pastures.

This prevents buffalo herds from out-growing their land base. Otherwise the herd will double and redouble in a few years, soon over-grazing their pastures.

Having fewer bulls means less fighting, and makes breeding easier for the dominant bulls.

Older bulls wander farther away from herd, sometimes in tandem with another old bull. Photo by Vince Gunn.

The oldest bulls likely wander farther away. Maybe they lost too many battles and were chased way by dominant bulls.

Sometimes a lone older bull moves in tandem with another old bull, staying a quarter mile or so distant from each other. Other times each may be totally alone.

An older bull often ranges far from his home herd. Yellowstone Park, NPS.

Noble fathers Defend

For most of the year, except during breeding season, the big bulls are often found at some distance from the herd. Nevertheless, they stay watchful.

Buffalo bulls are born with a strong sense of responsibility.

They keep an eye on predators—such as the wolf packs of former days that followed the herds.

Lewis and Clark wrote about the buffalo herds “and their shepherds, the wolves.” While the wolves did not usually attack healthy buffalo, they often killed a lone injured buffalo hanging off to the side.

The bulls paid little attention to the wolves unless they were threatening the herd.

Then the “noble fathers,” as they’ve been called, moved quickly to protect mothers and calves.

I saw those “noble fathers” in action once myself. Our kids were teenagers then and with friends, we were riding horseback in the North Unit of Teddy Roosevelt Park.

We were about 15 riders, talking and laughing—so we probably looked like trouble as we came trotting over a hill.

There below us in a broad valley, a herd of about 60 buffalo were spread out grazing. They looked up and started to run, alarmed by our sudden appearance.

We pulled in our horses and paused to watch.

They didn’t run far. The big bulls stopped in an open area and formed a tight circle facing us, shaking their massive heads. Cows and calves took to the inside behind them.

Here’s how Colonel R.I. Dodge, described the behavior of bulls reacting like this in his 19th century book, Plains of the Great West.

“The bulls with heads erect, tails cocked in air, nostrils expanded and eyes that seem to flash fire, walk uneasily to and fro, menacing the intruder by pawing the earth and tossing their huge heads.”

Our modern-day buffalo bulls reacted in just that way—flashing fire, pawing the earth, shaking their heads in fury. Plainly, they were in a defensive mode that they all understood—the bulls ready and eager to take us on. The calves well-hidden and protected.

We understood them, too. It was clear they intended to fight if needed.

As we paused to watch, we were delighted to think that—for over 100 years, this very herd had lived safely inside a national park, without any large enemies to fear. No wolves nor grizzly bears nor hunters.

Yet these “noble fathers” stood ready to fight us off and protect with their lives the young calves and their mothers, just as their ancestors did long ago when real enemies threatened. No hungry wolves would have broken through their defenses that day!

We skirted far around and let the bulls think they had stood off our attack.

In an unusual rescue of long ago, a Blackfeet Indian reported seeing a young buffalo bull charge a grizzly bear that had attacked a heifer.

The grizzly was lying in wait, hidden by a trail near a creek when a small bunch of buffalo trailed down to drink. Led by a young heifer, they walked down the bank in single file.

As the heifer passed under the clay shelf where the grizzly hid, he reached down with huge front paws and caught her around the neck, then leaped on her back.

With a loud snort, she struggled to escape.

Suddenly a “splendid young buffalo bull” came rushing down the trail and charged the bear, knocking him down.

They fought fiercely. The grizzly tried to grab the bull by the head and shoulders, but could not hold him.

The bull slashed furiously with his heavy horns.

Blood gushing from mortal wounds, the bear tried to escape, but the bull would not let him go. He kept up the attack until he had killed the bear.

Even then he continued to gore and toss the bear’s carcass off the ground. He seemed insane with rage.

The Blackfoot hunter—who was also hiding near the trail—was much afraid he’d be discovered and attacked too. Finally, to his relief, the bull dropped the carcass and went off to join his band.

Ernest Thompson Seton, a Canadian writer, reported in Lives of Game Animals that “when calving, a buffalo cow can fight off one or two wolves. But if more attack, she calls for help.

“Her loud angry snort will quickly bring the bulls to her aid.”

When hunting, Native hunters preferred to kill cows and young bulls, for better, more tender meat than they’d get from the tough older bulls. But first they had to get past the big bulls that protected the outside of the herd.

A white hunter who joined the annual Miami hunt in Kansas in August 1854 explained how the Miami Natives reached the animals they wanted.

Big bulls took to the outside of herd when attacked, protecting cows and calves in center. CM Russell.

“They shoot down several bulls. As a gap in the line is thus made, they dash their ponies through the breach, conforming speed and direction to that of the herd.

“Gradually working toward the center, they find the cows, calves and two-year-olds, thus securing the finest robes and choicest meats.

“When their revolvers are empty, for only revolvers and bows and arrows can safely be used in this mode of killing, they worm their way out of the herd in the same manner as they entered.”

In blizzards and fierce storms, too, observers say, the large bulls form a triangle facing into the wind and shield cows and calves from wintery blasts.

Breeding Season: When big Herds Come Together

During rut, the late July and August breeding season, when large herds came together—and still do in places with large herds like Yellowstone Park—the buffalo relationships “embrace attraction, rejection, acceptance, competition and cooperation within and between the sexes,” according to Professor Lott.

At National Parks, larger herds come together during breeding season in late July and August. Badlands National Park, SD, photo by Stephen Pedersen.

Lott writes that these relationships, though intense, are short-lived.

As young boy Lott grew up in sight of buffalo every day on the National Bison Range in Montana. He was born there in 1933—the same year as White Medicine, the most famous white buffalo of all time, who lived there all his 26 years.

He was very familiar with what he called the buffalos’ “social behavior, too marvelous a tale to go untold.”

Lott describes the chaos of breeding season. In rut, he says, the major dominant bull seeks out a cow that is nearly ready to breed, and “tends” her for a day or two, staying close and chasing other bulls away.

After she is bred, he finds another cow. If a rival bull is tending that cow, the dominant bull chases him off if he can, and takes over.

If he can’t, but persists, they fight until the battle is settled.

Two big bulls will fight furiously, slamming heads, battling for dominance. But most of their interactions are peaceful, as all know their rank order and tend to accept it.

The weaker, more submissive bulls give up easily and wander away. They know they can’t win—maybe they’ve battled that tough bull before.

The winner recognizes the other’s surrender and without wasting any more energy, lets him go.

Pecking order sets Buffalo Rules

Every buffalo knows where he or she stands in the herd’s ranking order. Each defers to those with higher ranking, and takes advantage of those with lower rank, pushing them away from what are deemed the tastiest grasses.

Each animal knows where he or she stands in the herd’s pecking order. Photo by Mana2580.

It’s called the “pecking order,” enforced by all. Each individual has a strong sense of where he or she stands in the herd, and accepts and respects that pecking order.

Regardless of how they are related, each of the females is in a dominant or submissive position to each of the others. A calf ranks with its mother.

In field research for his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin, Tom McHugh spent three months studying the ranking or “pecking” order of 16 buffalo in a Jackson Hole Wildlife Park near Yellowstone.

McHugh identified each buffalo, naming them by their horns (“Ring,” “Straight,” “Uneven”), their hides (“White Hump,” “Dark Hump,” “Scar”) or facial features (“Thin”). He got to know each individual and gave each a name and number—with a dab of paint when necessary, especially for the yearlings and 2-year-olds, which were harder to distinguish from each other.

When all were clearly identified and he could tell them apart, McHugh began charting their interactions.

Lacking sufficient grazing that winter, the buffalo were fed hay. As the hay wagon dropped its load each morning, the rankings were clearly revealed.

The main dominant bull strode to the first pile of hay, pushing all others away, shaking his head threateningly. The others moved off with scant protest to another pile—where they jostled the more submissive ones there.

Before long that first bull saw a newer, better pile of hay, and moved aggressively to claim it.

Three cows, already eating there stepped away quickly, jostling each other for position at the next best hay pile.

After a short time, the dominant bull moved on to a pile of hay he perceived as better, again chasing away subordinates. Usually he was treated respectfully—the more submissive ones simply moved away.

Big bulls eat their fill before allowing others to reach tasty hay. Photo by F Berg.

Typically, he ate there only a short time before moving again and displacing other buffalo—who displaced and jostled others and moved down one pile or more.

Meanwhile the 2nd and 3rd ranked animals moved up behind Number 1, displacing those of lower rank.

And so it went, from one pile to the next—the bigger, more aggressive buffalo displacing lower levels. However, they invariably showed submissive behavior to those of higher rank.

McHugh reported that Bull 6 dominated Bull 5, who dominated White Hump, who dominated Scar and all the way down the line to Yearling Heifer1B, the lowest-ranking animal of all.

Unfortunately for her, Yearling Heifer1B was subjected to head butts and horn prodding from all the other buffalo. She dared not retaliate against any of them.

Satisfied that he had discovered the truth of hierarchy for his book, “The Time of the Buffalo,” McHugh concluded: “Research showed that, far from being an arbitrary collection of similar animals, this society of buffalo was organized into a complex and discernible order of rank!”

McHugh also reported that rankings were disrupted with the birth of new calves, or when a new individual joined the herd, or young bulls began to assert themselves over previously dominant cows.

Rankings are disrupted when new individual joins the herd or young bulls begin to assert themselves. Photo by Richard Lee.

With such interruptions, a new hierarchy took over. Then, after things settled down again, each individual quietly accepted the new rankings.

Indeed, as Lott attests, such buffalo herd relationships are “too marvelous a tale to go untold.”

Saving Buffalo From Extinction—Part 2

by Francie M. Berg

First published May 26, 2020

Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones started out as a commercial hide hunter on southern buffalo ranges.

His life adventures took him from his home in Kansas to the frozen Canadian North and the steaming jungles of Africa.

Buffalo Jones was a flamboyant speaker, a dreamer, and an entrepreneur who risked his profits over and over in buying, selling and shipping buffalo.

He prospered and suffered as a farmer, buffalo hunter, town developer and rancher. An expert roper, he captured calves in Texas and New Mexico. And, as a friend of President Teddy Roosevelt through the new American Bison Association, he was appointed as the first Superintendent of Yellowstone Park, in charge of restoring that depleted buffalo herd.

His greatest contribution was—not only capturing and raising a profitable buffalo herd—but finding ways to buy and sell buffalo and ship them across North America to help start new herds.

As a child, Jones caught and tamed small animals. He made his first money by capturing and selling a squirrel. That “transaction” Jones said “fixed upon me the ruling passion that has adhered so closely through my life.”

Jones said that he conceived his buffalo rescue plan in 1872.

He said he had killed “thousands of buffalo” in his hunting days and he regretted it.

“I am positive it was the wickedness committed in killing so many that impelled me to take measures for perpetuating the race which I had helped almost destroy.”

Filled with remorse, he set aside his big buffalo rifle, gathered some of the last wild buffalo calves and committed himself to helping the buffalo survive and thrive throughout North America.

He bought buffalo from as far north as Winnipeg in Canada and sold buffalo across the North American continent to help get parks and private owners started.

According to Ken Zontek, in Buffalo Nation: American Indian Efforts to Restore the Bison, during the last days of the wild buffalo, Buffalo Jones and his assistants went four times out to the buffalo ranges from his ranch near Garden City, Kansas, down into the Texas Panhandle, and captured 60 buffalo of all ages. Not all, however survived, or made the trip home.

Jones was a flamboyant speaker and told entertaining tales of those trips—roping buffalo calves, grabbing their tails, and hand-throwing them.

He explained to his biographer, Henry Inman, that on his first calf-catching expedition he had to protect his charges from wolves that closed in on the calves he had thrown and tied.

With a buffalo calf under each arm, Buffalo Jones kept the Texas wolves at bay until the supply wagon arrived. Sketch by J.A. Ricker from Buffalo Jones’ 40 years of Adventure.

Jones could not pause while he worked to catch as many calves as possible, he said, so he left an article of clothing on each calf to warn away the hungry wolves.

“Half-naked and burdened by a calf under each arm,” Jones then rode back to aid his captives. Finally, his support wagon, furnished with pails of milk, arrived and saved the day.

Emerson Hough, accompanying Jones’ second expedition, provided a vivid description of Jones’ capture method. “Up came his hand, circling the wide coil of the rope. We could almost hear it whistle through the air. … In a flash the dust was gone, and there was Colonel Jones kneeling on top of a struggling tawny object.”

During that buffalo-saving trip, Jones, like Goodnight, was “compelled to kill” a ferocious mother buffalo with his revolver. “An unwished result and much deplored, for we came, not to slay, but to rescue,” wrote Hough.

Jones successfully captured and mothered up many calves with milk cows, brought along each time for that purpose.

This usually involved an initial fight until the calf and cow grew attached to each other during the long trip from Texas back to Kansas.

Buffalo Jones’ last two calf-catching expeditions in 1888 and 1889 proved noteworthy for a couple of reasons.

First, Jones roped adult buffalo and tried to drive them home—unsuccessfully, however. Jones explained that the grown buffalo “took fits, stiffened themselves, then dropped dead, apparently preferring death to captivity.”

Many of the 60 he roped died, both calves and adult buffalo.

Second, it was on this expedition that he claimed he roped the last wild buffalo calf of the southern range.

“I whirled the lasso in the air … [and] laid the golden wreath around the neck of the last buffalo calf ever captured.”

Zontek notes that Jones—like the other rescuers of buffalo—was a buffalo hunter and a westerner. He saved buffalo near the ranch where he worked and lived as well, as making calf-hunting trips farther afield.

Like the others, Buffalo Jones worked hard to make a living. He saw nature as something beautiful, created to serve humankind.

The Buffalo Jones’ herd numbered 50 by 1888.

That year he had a chance to purchase 86 Canadian Plains buffalo originating from the herd of Tonka Jim McKay. Jones willingly paid $50,000, an average of $582 each.

Shipping them from Winnipeg to Kansas proved difficult, however, and added to the expense. Of the first thirty-three he cut out to drive to the railroad, a number of buffalo broke and ran back to the herd.

Rounding up and shipping 86 buffalo from Winnipeg to Kansas proved a challenge.

Three more were killed by others in the railroad car near St. Paul. Thirteen escaped when unloaded for water in Kansas City and stampeded through town.

Shipping the remaining buffalo home to his ranch at Garden City, Kansas, proved a challenge, but once there, they increased rapidly.

He soon owned over 150 head and began selling buffalo to zoos, parks and private individuals.

Like Charles Goodnight, Jones experimented with crossing buffalo with cattle. He also learned what did and did not work from Goodnight. Often the cross-breds were not fertile, and most did not show the desirable traits he wanted.

By 1895 Jones was deep in financial trouble.

Forced to sell his ranch and holdings, he dispersed his buffalo. Some went to Pablo and eventually back to Canada. Others shipped to west coast locations.

As a friend of President Theodore Roosevelt through work with the American Bison Society, Buffalo Jones requested and was granted an appointment as the first superintendent and game warden of Yellowstone National Park.

There he led the effort to rebuild the remnants of the Yellowstone buffalo herd, with a mix of buffalo from numerous sources. From long experience, he knew exactly where to find viable buffalo herds and how to handle them.

Unfortunately, Jones was not so skilled working with employees and eventually lost favor and his ideal job.

He continued lecturing on his experiences with buffalo and his African adventures, but gained a reputation for exaggeration, and even hints of shadiness in his dealings.

Pete Dupree kept his buffalo herd intact

In what is now South Dakota, Fred Dupris (also spelled Dupree) watched the buffalo disappear from Dakota Territory.

The buffalo had migrated farther west because of settlement in the eastern Dakotas and hunting pressure throughout the territory during the late 1860s. For 15 years they were gone from Dakota Territory.

The son of a distinguished French-Canadian family in Quebec, Fred Dupree arrived in South Dakota in 1838 and prospered through a variety of ventures, including fur trading and cattle ranching, according to Dave Carter, director of the National Bison Association.

Fred Dupree, Fur Trader and cattle rancher on the Cheyenne River. SD Historical Society.

He married a Minneconjou Sioux, Mary Ann Good Elk Woman, and set up a trading post in a pleasant wooded area along the Cheyenne River within the Great Sioux Indian Reservation, just at the point where Cherry Creek flowed into the Cheyenne.

As a Native American woman, Mary Ann held rights to run cattle on the reservation, and they built up a herd of 200 range cattle, along with running the prosperous trading post.

There they raised a large family, with 10 children.

Fred Dupris became one of the state’s leading pioneers. As each of their children married and started a family, he and his wife built another log cabin in the cottonwood trees along the river.

Late in his life, when Fred Dupree was in his 70s, amazingly, the last 50,000 buffalo migrated back onto the Great Sioux Reservation.

It was December of 1880. The Duprees immediately notified relatives and friends and prepared for a winter buffalo hunt. They also invited the young missionary Thomas Riggs from the Oahe Mission, just east of the Missouri River, to join them.

Riggs wrote a detailed description of the three-month buffalo hunt, so we have a first-hand, documented account. (See “Buffalo Heartbeats Across the Plains,” Winter Hunt in Slim Buttes, by FM Berg, page 26.)

That winter of 1880-1881 they spent in tepees and tents in the Slim Buttes was one of the coldest, heaviest-snow winters in years, Riggs said.

Soon after—that spring or the following one, in 1881 or 1882, Pete Dupree and some of his brothers, and likely sisters, too, went out to rescue buffalo calves.

They likely drove a buckboard wagon pulled by a team of horses, with outriders leading pack horses for carrying home additional buffalo meat, always much needed by their many families.

Until 1883, plenty of buffalo still grazed there on the Great Sioux Reservation—but almost nowhere else.

Fred Dupree, the old fur trader is historically credited for “sending out his sons” to capture the buffalo calves. However, by then he was an older man in his mid-70s and stayed home by the fire while his family went out on their last winter hunt. His sons were grown men.

One might imagine the old trader telling visitors that he sent out his sons to rescue calves, even if it didn’t quite happen that way. Again, conflicting stories abound.

A more likely scenario may be that Mary Ann Dupree and her sons and daughters hatched the details of their plan to rescue buffalo calves during their long three-month buffalo hunt.

Mary Ann was the woman who suggested the missionary Thomas Riggs join them and share their family tent in the Slim Buttes. She was very resourceful and known by her husband and others as “a good woman.”

In the extreme cold of that winter they spent many hours together in the tent and were, naturally, very familiar with the Native Americans’ deep concerns about buffalo soon becoming extinct.

After 15 long years of heartbreak over their disappearance, the buffalo had returned to them.

They had migrated right into the Duprees’ own backyard, so to speak. If these Native people failed to help them now, who would?

Some historians suggest that the Duprees brought their buffalo calves home in their wagon in February 1881, at the end of that long, cold hunt in the Slim Buttes.

But there’s no logical way that could have happened.

First of all, wild nine- and ten-month-old buffalo calves would have been much too large and aggressive in February to be handled and would never have gentled well.

Second, there was no extra room in the wagons. The Dupree wagons carried full loads of hides and meat—no room for lunging, brawling half-grown calves! The long trip home through deep crusted snow with heavily loaded wagons was difficult enough without trying to wrestle big calves.

Third, Riggs made no mention of hauling buffalo calves home in his summing up of the three-month hunt’s successes.

Besides, until 1883, plenty of wild buffalo still grazed there on the Great Sioux Reservation—but almost nowhere else within riding distance.

Another story, that their father Fred Dupree picked up the calves on the Yellowstone River in earlier years, also seems unlikely. The fragile calves would hardly have survived that long trip home without milk and good nourishment. Many such captured calves died of starvation long before they ever reached a home ranch.

Most likely the location was the south fork of the Grand near the juncture where the north and south forks flow together or within a few miles.

South Dakota historians writing for 4th graders have identified the south Grand River as the site where the Duprees found their buffalo calves. That was only a couple of days drive by wagon from their home on Cherry Creek—around 60 miles. [1. South Dakota State Historical Society, “Buffalo in South Dakota, Unit 3, Lesson 3: Preservation of the Buffalo,” The Weekly South Dakotan: South Dakota Treasure Chest for 4th-Grade History, www.sd4history.com.]

Also, the Grand River is identified as the place where Pete caught his five calves by Wayne C. Lee, writing in “Scotty Philip, the Man Who Saved the Buffalo.” [2. p157 and p225. Caxton 1975.]

That Pete Dupree immediately found fairly gentle range cows and quickly “mothered up” his buffalo calves was another major achievement. In this effort he may well have had help from his mother and sisters—and thus avoid the typically high death loss of “rescued” buffalo calves.

Buffalo calves often died of malnutrition before they could be successfully “mothered up” with a range cow. SD Game, Fish, Parks.

Mothering up—trying to coax half-wild range cows to accept the strange-smelling calves, and the lanky youngsters to nurse and bond with the low-slung cows—could not have been easy. But once accepted by their adoptive moms, the gangly buffalo calves grazed contentedly on lush reservation lands, and within a few years, began raising calves of their own.

While the other four buffalo rescuers engaged in considerable buying and selling of buffalo, even donating many buffalo for new public herds, Pete Dupree kept his growing buffalo herd intact, and allowed them to increase naturally on the Great Sioux Reservation.

Pete Dupree kept his growing buffalo herd intact grazing and multiplying on the Great Sioux Reservation. Photo by Stephen Pedersen.

He neither sold nor purchased buffalo. As buffalo, they required little or no care. They just naturally multiplied. And occasionally, a stray buffalo joined his herd.

Also, from time to time they interbred with range cattle, resulting in the crossbred animal, then called “cattleo.”

For ten years Pete’s herd increased. Then in 1898 Pete Dupree died.

Scotty Phillip took over the bison rescue

His younger sister’s husband, Douglas Carlin handled the sale of his estate. In a highly fortunate move, Carlin found the right buyer for Dupree’s buffalo.

James “Scotty” Phillip was born in Scotland in 1858 and traveled throughout the American West panning gold, working as a scout, and ranching in Wyoming, before marrying Sarah “Sally” Larribee, a Lakota Sioux, in 1879, according to Dave Carter, of the National Bison Association.

Like the Duprees, Scotty and Sally Philip intended to do what they could to save the buffalo from extinction.

They settled down near Fort Pierre in South Dakota in 1882, prospering in the cattle business, running cattle on the Great Sioux Reservation, under Sally’s Indian allotment, as well as on privately owned lands the purchased.

When the chance came to buy Pete Dupree’s buffalo for $10,000, Sally urged her husband to buy.

“We must not let the buffalo die. My people might need them again,” Sally Philip is quoted as saying.

It is likely, she was thinking not only of Lakota needs for food, shelter and clothing, but also their spiritual and emotional ties to buffalo.

Scotty agreed that helping save the buffalo was a way he could support his Native friends, who often were not treated well.

Philip sent six cowboys to round up the Dupree herd and drive them the 100 miles to his pasture. His nephew George Philip, a budding lawyer, was pressed into service and later wrote about the difficult venture.

George Philip wrote of the formidable task in which he and the cowboys finally brought to the Philip pasture gate 83 buffalo, plus a number of cattalo.

They’d had to let go of the old renegade bulls that escaped from their several roundups.

Philip’s cowboys had to let of old renegade buffalo bulls that refused to cooperate in the roundup. Later most were shot for their heads. Photo by Chloe Leis.

Philip declared the cattalo worthless and quickly sold or butchered them, according to his biographer, Wayne C. Lee, in “Scotty Philip: The Man Who Saved the Buffalo.”

He believed that buffalo were unique, and deserved to retain their natural traits. (This attitude prevails today among breeders, and is listed among the ethics policies adopted today by both the National Bison Association and Intertribal Buffalo Council. No cross-breeding, unless accidental. This is sometimes expressed as “let buffalo be buffalo.”)

The Phillips became willing and devoted buyers and protectors of the Dupree buffalo herd. Like the Duprees, they took their mission to save buffalo seriously. They intended to do what they could to save the buffalo from extinction.

When the U.S. government opened the Great Sioux Reservation lands in South Dakota for homesteading, Scotty Philip asked that 3,500 acres on the Missouri River bluffs north of Fort Pierre be set aside for grazing native buffalo.

Congress agreed and located the reserve just north of Philip’s own buffalo pasture, leasing it to him for $50 a year.

On the Missouri River bluffs his buffalo herd of several hundred head became a well-known tourist attraction. Special excursion boats brought visitors upriver from Pierre to view the rare and amazing buffalo ranging in the rugged badlands.

One day a delegation of Mexican officials from Juarez came to see the tourist buffalo. They laughed and declared the big bulls lazy and slow moving. Definitely unworthy of comparison with their own fiery Mexican fighting bulls, they thought.

Scotty Philip and his Fort Pierre friends took offense and challenged a bull fight.

This actually took place in January 1907 in the bull-fighting ring in Juarez.

Fortunately, Phillip’s nephew George was called on again to attend the two buffalo bulls shipped there, when a blizzard emergency kept Scotty home with his cattle. George described the Mexican bull-Buffalo fight in delightful detail for historical records. (See “Buffalo Heartbeats,”Mexican Bullfight, page 182.)

Native buffalo owners grew their buffalo herds

Thus, these five family groups are especially honored as having saved the buffalo from extinction.

Men received the credit from early historians for saving the buffalo, in the fashion of the times. However, women were much involved, as well, and are celebrated today.

Native American women went on all the big hunts and watched the great herds disappear. They despaired over the ruthless slaughter by commercial hunters with powerful, long-range rifles.

Women and children, too, undoubtedly helped to bottle feed calves, and coax the adoptive milk cows and half-wild range cattle mothers to bond with their gangly new calves.

The men “may have been considered ‘Buffalo Kings’ by their fellow ranchers, but it was the wives who should be remembered as ‘Buffalo Queens,’” says Susan Ricci, manager of the Buffalo Museum in Rapid City.

Modern historians rightly give the families a great deal of credit for saving the buffalo. Not just the men.

These were the five family groups who made special efforts to care for their buffalo herds and raised sustainable adult herds for many years:

1. Sam Walking Coyote and his herd purchasers Charles Allard and Michel Pablo in western Montana;

2. James McKay and neighbors in Manitoba, Canada;

3. Pete Dupree and his herd purchasers the Scotty Philips in South Dakota;

4. Charles and Molly Goodnight of Texas;

5. Buffalo Jones of Kansas.

Doubtless, other people were involved in raising buffalo for a time here and there. Nevertheless, the herds of these five flourished and eventually became the foundation for literally all the Plains buffalo herds populating the world today.

All were westerners, all hunted buffalo and all were ranchers.

The first three of these groups had Native American roots and knew well the cultural importance of buffalo in the lives of their people. They all held a deep cultural stake in survival of the Buffalo.

Rather than butchering or selling the increase, the Native families mostly grew their herds, multiplying and strengthening their numbers. They cherished the natural wild traits of the buffalo without trying to alter them. Cross-breeding, when it occurred was accidental, the result of cattle and buffalo sharing the same ranges.

Native American families grew their herds and cherished the wild traits of the buffalo without trying to change them. South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks.

The white ranching families, the Goodnights and Buffalo Jones, respected the natural world, cherished their buffalo and appreciated their own roles in preserving them. However, perhaps more than the others, both these non-Indian families hoped to reap economic benefits and engaged in much buying and selling of buffalo.

Also, both experimented with cross-breeding in the hope of developing hardier, more productive beef animals. This was generally unsuccessful, and today cross-breeding is discouraged and violates the Code of Ethics of both the National Bison Association and the Intertribal Buffalo Council.

Much has been written through the years about the role that noted conservationists from the east played in pulling bison back from the brink of extinction.

The work of William Hornaday, George Bird Grinnell, President Theodore Roosevelt and others of the American Bison Society was important in setting aside public lands for buffalo and providing long-term sustainability for public herds. They were visionary conservationists, and also had hunted buffalo.

But Ken Zontek, buffalo historian, raises an interesting point in his book. He says not much attention has been paid to westerners who actually kept the young calves alive.

He notes that, while conservation-minded people in the east put forth a valuable effort in founding wildlife parks and sanctuaries for long-term survival of the buffalo, they would have failed, had it not been for westerners who caught and saved calves in their own localities.

His observation is absolutely true.

Once the buffalo were thriving in viable herds, men and women from the east made sure they were safe long-term and multiplying in buffalo parks and sanctuaries throughout the United States.

However, if not for the five rescuing groups and their families caring for young starving calves in their own communities, the Plains buffalo would not have survived as a species.

Without them there’d be no buffalo alive today.

To a greater or lesser extent their vision involved the survival of an endangered species.

Their herds flourished and eventually became the foundation of all the Plains buffalo herds now populating the United States and Canada.

These are the families—with boots and moccasins on the ground—who kept the buffalo species alive at their lowest ebb.

Saving the Buffalo from Extinction—Part 1

by Francie Berg

First published May 19, 2020

Clearly, the buffalo were headed for extinction. No one seemed to care.

The “bottleneck”—as it’s been called—drew even closer each year after the last great buffalo hunt on the Great Sioux Reservation in 1883.

The low point came in the 1890’s, or perhaps later, around the turn of the century. That was when the “safe and protected” Yellowstone Park herd, estimated at 200, was suddenly decimated by poachers seeking trophy heads.

Fewer than 25 buffalo, well hidden in remote and rugged canyons, survived that slaughter in Yellowstone Park.

The species was nearly choked off completely at that time. Even the few hundred remaining seemed destined to dwindle.

William Hornaday voiced his despair over the buffalos’ nearly-inevitable extinction in his 1889 book, “The Extermination of the American Bison.” He wrote:

“The wild buffalo is practically gone forever, and in a few more years, when the whitened bones of the last bleaching skeleton shall have been picked up and shipped East for commercial uses, nothing will remain of him save his old, well-worn trails along the water-courses, a few museum specimens, and regret for his fate.”

Hormaday despaired that ‘when the whitened bones of the last bleaching skeleton were picked up and shipped East’ the only memory of buffalo would be trails to water, regret for his fate, and a few specimens in museums. Photo National Park Service.

As head taxidermist at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC, Hornaday worked hard to collect dead buffalo specimens. He believed it was his duty to help the nation’s most important museums show future generations how magnificent the buffalo had once been.

Difficulties in raising Buffalo

Some ranching families stepped in to save a few buffalo calves, but their efforts were scattered and uncoordinated. Likely most did not see themselves as important links in the void of trying to save an entire species.

Raising a viable herd became more and more difficult as years went by. Even if fragile young calves survived their initial crisis of bonding and grew to adulthood. Even if their saviors found adequate pasture not needed for other farming.

There was no market for buffalo. No one wanted to buy them. They were difficult to handle, and worst of all, they quickly outgrew their boundaries.

When too crowded, they simply broke through confining fences and caused havoc in the community. Angry neighbors waved pitchforks over ravaged crops.

No government program advocated their rescue. Even toward the end, no experts reached out to save the majestic buffalo.

When the owner of a small herd died or lost his land, the herd had to be disposed of—and usually quickly. The buffalo herd was multiplying fast and pasture boundaries were easily breached.

All too easily came the obvious solution—at the butcher shop. Slaughter the entire herd, when heirs could no longer handle the buffalo. End of problem.

But a few feeble glimmers of hope shown through.

Actually, there were five.

These five family groupings get the credit—and our gratitude—for establishing viable buffalo herds that grew and multiplied. They are:

1. Samuel Walking Coyote and herd purchasers Charles Allard and Michel Pablo in western Montana;

2. James McKay and neighbors in Manitoba, Canada;

3. Pete Dupree and herd purchasers, the Scotty Philips in South Dakota;

4. Charles and Molly Goodnight of Texas;

5. Buffalo Jones of Kansas.

Separately, these people brought buffalo back in significant numbers for survival—onto the western plains and grasslands where they have always thrived so well.

These were ordinary people—westerners, ranchers, even buffalo hunters—with boots on the ground. Or more specifically, in over half the cases—moccasins on the ground.

Separately, five family groups of ordinary people in their own communities captured wild calves, raised them into viable buffalo herds and brought the animals back from near extinction. Photo by Brian Miller.

The first three of these five family groupings had Native American roots. The last two were white ranching families.

Without them, buffalo would have gone the way of the passenger pigeon.

William Hornaday’s dire prediction could have proved true. The last whitened bones of the last bleached buffalo skeleton could have been shipped out for fertilizer.

Sam Walking Coyote’s trek over the Rocky Mountains

Samuel Walking Coyote of the Pend d’Oreille Indian Tribe in western Montana had no intention of raising buffalo—or of helping to save the species.

After all, he came from west of the Continental Divide—not the historic home of Plains buffalo.

But there he was with eight half-grown buffalo calves on the east side of the Rocky Mountains and a longing to return back home.

He wasn’t sure he’d be welcome. He knew he might already be in trouble with the Fathers at the Mission. But he hoped the calves might be viewed as a nice gift for them.

Walking Coyote lived with his Flathead wife on her reservation in western Montana.

There are several versions of Walking Coyote’s story. But as with most of the other heroes of this buffalo saga, he could neither write, nor read his own account of what happened.

In the summer of 1872 he decided to ride east across the Rocky Mountains on old Indian trails over the Continental Divide and spend the winter hunting buffalo in Montana’s

He made the trip and had a fine time hunting buffalo with Blackfeet hunters who scouted far up the Milk River close to and likely across the border into Canada.

Orphaned calves bonded with the horses and followed the Blackfeet hunters home. Photo by Chris Hull, SD Game, Fish, Parks.

After one hunt, eight orphaned buffalo calves came into their camp and bonded with the horses. They stayed around the rest of the winter and ate hay with the Native horses.

During this time, Sam Walking Coyote fell in love with a young Blackfeet woman from the tribe, and arranged with her family to marry, ignoring the fact he already had a Flathead wife.

Two wives were permitted in both tribes. Often it happened through necessity, as when an impoverished widow was brought into her sister’s family for protection.

But Walking Coyote knew very well that the Jesuit priests at St. Ignatius Mission would be angry to discover his second wife.

He longed to go home, and was persuaded by a friend that the buffalo calves would make a fine gift for them, as a way to make amends.

So, one pleasant spring day, after some of the snow had melted from the high trails, Walking Coyote and his new wife set off west to cross the Rocky Mountains with their little caravan, several pack horses, dried buffalo meat and the eight buffalo calves.

It was hundreds of rugged miles travelling over and up and down the Continental Divide.

The trail they followed was long and treacherous, up one steep mountain pass and down the next, alternately leading and driving their little herd, scrambling over rocks and fallen timber. They waded through icy rushing rivers and deep snow banks.

Sometimes they tied the smaller calves onto the backs of horses, when they were too tired to walk.

Grass for the livestock became scarce and there was no game to eat. Two of the calves died along the way.

At long last they came out on the west side of the mountains and made their way down onto the Flathead reservation.

A man named Que-que-sah is quoted in an interview by the 1942 W.P.A. Writers’ Project, as saying, “I was in the village St. Ignatius that day in 1873, when [Walking Coyote] rode in with his pack string. He had four buffalo calves on pack ponies. I recall that they were rather small. One, in particular, was very young and weak.”

As it turned out, the priests did not look with favor on Walking Coyote, his new wife, or even the gangly buffalo calves. They scolded him severely, and he was punished by his first wife’s tribe.

Banned from the mission, he moved his buffalo farther on down the valley. There they became pets and objects of great interest to the Native people.

“We were all greatly interested in the welfare of Samuel’s calves,” recalled Que-que-sah. “I think that every Indian on the reservation looked upon this little herd as the last connecting link with the happier past of his people. I know we all protected them, wherever they were grazing.”

The Native community grew committed to the little herd’s survival, writes Ken Zontak in “Buffalo Nation.”

Interestingly, the west side of the Continental Divide was not the natural home of Plains buffalo. Historically buffalo lived only east of the Divide and did not come across the Rockies.

But the six calves thrived there on the rich mountain grasses and multiplied.

By 1884, Sam Walking Coyote owned a herd of 13 tame buffalo.

Pride of the community: Walking Coyote’s small herd wandered unmolested on the Flathead Reservation. Photo by SDGFP.

“The small herd wandered about the Flathead Reservation unmolested and caused much excitement during calving time,” wrote Zontak.

“Their bison served as the pride of the community, with Sunday observers visiting after church at Saint Ignatius to view the icons of a bygone era.”

However, as the herd increased, the huge animals broke down fences and destroyed crops. They were becoming a nuisance to Sam’s neighbors.

He decided to sell them to Charles Allard and Michel Pablo, friends of his and ranchers in the valley, who were interested in raising buffalo.

The Canadian Winnipeg Tribune stated that Walking Coyote had a prospective Canadian buyer, but negotiations broke down when he named his price–$250 a head.

The Winnipeg newspaper reported, “Donald McDonald, the last man to represent the Hudson’s Bay company on United States territory, entered into negotiations to purchase that little herd of the last plains buffalo remaining alive.

“But C.A. Allard and Michel Pablo, two Montana ranchers, made a deal with Walking Coyote, at $250 a head for the animals.

“Walking Coyote insisted on having actual money. He refused to accept a cheque. Allard and Pablo were busy counting out the greenbacks into piles of $100, each of which was placed under a stone, when they saw a mink.

“Instantly, Walking Coyote and both the ranchers went after the mink, and for some minutes forgot the piles of money, to which they hurried back, to find it safe, with a lone Indian looking at it with covetous eyes,” according to the Winnipeg Tribune (Dec 22, 1922).

Both the new partners had Native American mothers, and Pablo’s wife was Salish. They had rights to run buffalo free on Indian lands.

Pleased with their purchase of buffalo, they bought 26 more, along with 18 cattalo—half buffalo, half cattle—from Buffalo Jones of Kansas.

A healthy herd, it multiplied and by 1895 they owned 300 head of buffalo grazing them on the same free Indian Tribal ranges.

Then Allard died unexpectedly at age 43, and the herd was divided. Allard’s half went to several buyers. Some went to Yellowstone Park to begin replenishing that herd.

Michael Pablo and his Montana buffalo herd. It soon multiplied to over 300 head—and more.

By 1906, with his herd doubled again to 300, Pablo learned the Flathead reservation was opening to homesteaders. He’d lose his free range there. He offered to sell the whole herd to the US government for $200 per head, but Congress turned it down as too expensive.

Eventually he was able to sell his entire herd—redoubled again to over 700 head—to the Canadian government. Price: $250 each including freight by rail.

James McKay, a Canadian Métis hunter

Frequently, James McKay, also known as Tonka Jim, joined the twice-yearly Red River Métis hunts.

Living near Winnipeg, Canada, Tonka Jim McKay began his career working for the Hudson Bay fur trading company, as did his Scottish Highlander father. His mother, Margarete, was Métis.

Tonka Jim McKay enjoyed wearing the popular Metis garb: Hudson Bay coat with hood attached, tied at waist with colorful sash. Voyageur Capote Coat with Nancy Gouliquer, Manitobamuseum.ca.

He served as postmaster and clerk, managed small trading posts mostly in what are now southwestern Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan, and established two Hudson Bay posts in US territory.

Moving into Manitoba politics, he represented the Métis people and helped them negotiate treaties. He served Manitoba as president of the Executive Council, Speaker of the Legislative Council and Minister of Agriculture.

With his knowledge of the prairies and indigenous people, McKay also excelled as a frontier interpreter and guide. Often he wore the popular Métis attire—a hooded blue capote with pants of homemade wool, moccasins and a colorful sash.

With each buffalo hunt, McKay noted his friends were going farther west and south into Montana with their Red River Carts to find buffalo herds.

Tonka Jim McKay enjoyed wearing the popular Metis garb: Hudson Bay coat with hood attached, tied at waist with colorful sash. Voyageur Capote Coat with Nancy Gouliquer, Manitobamuseum.ca.

With the massive kills of their large Métis parties, the Plains buffalo were quickly disappearing from Canada, as well as the northern states.

At the same time the constant hunting pressure pushed the Wood Buffalo farther and farther north in Canada.

McKay became alarmed at the scarcity of buffalo. On an 1873 Métis hunt he captured three calves with the help of friends and the next year, another three, bonding them with nurse cows on his Deer Lodge ranch some 28 miles west of Winnipeg.

He purchased a few more calves from Native hunters who went west to hunt and returned through Winnipeg.

In about 1877 McKay sold five calves to Colonel Sam Bedson, a penitentiary warden, for $1,000. Bedson’s buffalo thrived. By1888 he owned nearly 80 full-breed buffalo and 13 half-breeds.

Exhibition herd in paddock at Banff National Park, Alberta.

Unfortunately, in 1879, just as his buffalo herd was gaining some natural increase, Tonka Jim McKay died at the age of 51.

After his death some of McKay’s buffalo went to the Canadian government. Others went to another neighbor who then donated all of his 13 buffalo to Rocky Mountain Park in Banff for a special exhibition herd.

Charles and Molly Goodnight in Texas panhandle

When Charles Goodnight was 11, he moved to Texas from Illinois with his parents—who got caught up in the ‘Texas Fever’ of the 1840’s.

He fit right in, growing up on the new frontier, and took on several ranching positions before settling down as a rancher himself.

One of these jobs was trailing Texas cattle north to market. With drover Oliver Loving, he became well-known for blazing the Goodnight Loving Trail to the railroads in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The trail proved a success. Over the years hundreds of thousands of cattle were driven up the Goodnight Loving Trail from the Southern Plains to Cheyenne and then shipped by rail to eastern markets.

Charles Goodnight, a prominent cattleman of the Texas Panhandle, “approached greatness more nearly than any other cowman of history,” according to writer J. Frank Dobie.

Goodnight also killed his share of the wild buffalo that covered the Texas plains and competed with cattle for grass.

One day while buffalo hunting, he discovered that very young buffalo calves tired quickly and dropped behind when the herd stampeded. He decided to capture some of them.

“The first time I went out to get buffalo calves, I moved them up a little until three of the calves fell behind. I cut them off and they followed the horse home and into the corrals,” he recalled years later. “When night came I roped them and put them to their foster mothers, Texas cows.”

A few days later he cut out two more in the same way, but thought he needed one more.

“I wanted six, so I went out again and found one calf about twenty-four hours old. I scared the cow off some distance, and put the calf on my horse. But the cow returned and attacked me so viciously that I had to kill her to save my horse. I felt badly over it then, and the older I get, the worse I feel about having to kill that cow.”

Goodnight mothered up the six calves with range cows, and when they were eating well he left them with a friend, who agreed to care for them on shares for half the profits.

But when he returned, he was disappointed to find the friend “got tired of the business and sold out, and never even gave me my part of the money.”

In 1870, Goodnight married Mary Ann ‘Molly’ Dyer, a teacher from a small town west of Fort Worth, and began building up his own ranch in the new country of the Texas Panhandle.

Goodnight credited his wife Molly for renewing his interest in raising buffalo calves.

Molly realized the buffalo were fast disappearing and urged her husband to help save them.

He gave his wife credit for renewing his interest in raising buffalo.

“In the spring of 1879—to be exact, May 15th—at my wife’s request, I started out to look for some young buffalo. At last I found a few younger ones in Palo Duro canyon, and roped them from horseback.

“The month following, W.W. Dyer, my wife’s brother, caught two young females. From this start we have now a herd of 45 purebred buffaloes”

By then Goodnight owned many cattle and claimed 60,000 acres of pasture. He set aside 600 acres for a fenced buffalo park.

Together Charles and Molly Goodnight continued building up the first Texas Panhandle ranch, the JA Ranch, in the Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas Panhandle.

There they lived “the good life” in a Victorian-style home, and Mollie cooked for and entertained heads of state, hungry cattlemen and cowboys, as well as the Comanche leader Quanah Parker.

Mollie Goodnight taught children in the bunkhouse. The cowboys slept there at night, and she moved their things aside for school during the day. The house had electricity and sheltered hundreds of ranch workers and cowboys over the years.

Mollie Goodnight taught children in the bunkhouse. The cowboys slept there at night, and she moved their things aside for school during the day. The house had electricity and sheltered hundreds of ranch workers and cowboys over the years.

Molly Goodnight was known as compassionate, one of the few women living in the Texas Panhandle. She is given much credit for saving the original southern buffalo in their purest form.

At one point the Goodnights obtained two buffalo—a yearling and a two-year-old—from Colonel B.B. Groom’s ranch and sent two cowboys to pick them up.

Palo Duro Canyon of the Texas Panhandle, where the Goodnight buffalo herd hid out for years.

One of the cowboys, Mitch Bell, “goodhearted veteran of the Palo Duro,” recalled that they took a camping outfit, wagon and horse feed, since they would be out three nights.

Tied to the wagon was Old Blue, a ranch steer.

Bell said they roped and dragged the two buffalo up and necked them tight to Old Blue.

“Then we turned Old Blue loose, and he was the maddest steer I ever saw. He jerked the little one down, drug him a long-ways, and I thought was going to kill him, sure. But finally he got up, on the same side with the other buffalo, and he stayed there all the way back to the ranch.”

A pair of Goodnight bulls with authentic southern genes. Caprock Bison Release, Earl Nottingham.

Goodnight began experimenting with cross breeding in 1884, crossing buffalo with Polled Angus and Galloway cattle, and developed a herd of sixty cross-breds he called cattalo.

Their buffalo herd continued to increase and by 1910 was reported as totaling 125. On January 1, 1914, the total was 164, of which 35 were bulls, 107 were cows, and 22 were calves. The highest number the Goodnights reported was about 250 head.

The Goodnights donated and sold buffalo directly from their herd to Canada, Germany, Nevada, New Hampshire, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, New Mexico and New York. The genetics of the few remaining buffalo were becoming quite mixed.

Many of their donations to zoos and parks helped to start new buffalo herds.

Buffalo vs Bison– What Shall We Call Them?

by Francie M. Berg

First published May 5, 2020

What shall we call this magnificent monarch of the Plains—buffalo or bison?

Some people are adamant: the term buffalo correctly refers only to water buffalo in South Asia and Cape buffalo in Africa. We are simply wrong, misinformed, or ignorant to even think of calling the American bison—Buffalo.

Magnificent monarch of the Plains surveys his lush grassy range in the Badlands National Park in South Dakota. National Park Service.

Amy Tikkanen, writing in the Encyclopedia Britannica lays it all out. In her world it comes down to “Home, Hump and Horns.” Bison have one set, and buffalo the other.

But not so fast.

Many people who know the science simply prefer the term buffalo. I think most of us in the west—where the buffalo still roam in rather large numbers—do prefer it.

It rolls off the tongue in a friendlier way.

Yes, in scientific usage we agree, it is bison—as is bovine, equine and canine.

My husband Bert, a veterinarian, often used those terms when explaining treatments.

But do we call the cow, horse or dog those scientific names—bovine, equine and canine—in everyday talk?

One happy dog—or is he a friendly canine? Photo by Eric Ward.

Of course not. We don’t even think of them, our beloved friends, that way, do we?

Historic use of Buffalo in America

The word Buffalo actually came from early French fur traders and trappers who called the animals les boeufs, a Greek word for “the beeves” meaning oxen or bullocks.

In that context both names, bison and buffalo, have a similar meaning.

Buffalo has a long history of being used in North America, dating from 1625 when first recorded—even before bison was first documented, in 1774.

Buffalo even has a verb form—to buffalo, meaning to overawe or bewilder.

Here in the west we are well aware that a number of our other species were misnamed by early visitors.

Like buffalo, these early names often stuck, and have become generally accepted into our language, even though they may not derive from their proper scientific origins.

A herd of antelope mingles with the buffalo on this range. SD Tourism.

For instance, our antelope is really a pronghorn. An American jackrabbit is a hare, not a rabbit.

Our elk is really a wapiti, while our moose is the same as the European elk. And American caribou are identical to domesticated reindeer in Europe and Siberia.

But that’s okay—we like it this way.

The American Bison Association has made attempts to persuade buffalo ranchers to call their livestock bison. It does seem to work well when ranchers sell meat.

Maybe we all need a bit of distance for that.

That’s not the issue.

Otherwise, calling them Bison seems to put these magnificent, iconic animals out there at some distance. There’s no heart in it.

In contrast, Buffalo seems a good, solid, friendly yet respectful name, with no formality separating us from these majestic animals.

You can put some love into it if you choose.

“Give me a home where the Buff-a-low roam, where the deer and the antelope play.”

“Buffalo gals gonna come out tonite–come out tonite–and dance by the light of the moon!”

Can’t do that with Bison.

That’s not really the issue, though.

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,” a song for all ages. Photo by Akshar Dave.

“Buffalo gals gonna come out tonite–come out tonite–and dance by the light of the moon!”

Can’t do that with Bison.

That’s not really the issue, though.

Confusion of ‘Home, Hump and Horns?’

I think we can all agree that the Encyclopedia Britannica item as written by Amy Tikkanen, sets the argument out scientifically and clearly. No wiggle room there.

“It’s easy to understand why people confuse bison and buffalo,” Tikkanen writes. “Both are large, horned, oxlike animals of the Bovidae family. There are two kinds of bison, the American bison and the European bison, and two forms of buffalo, water buffalo and Cape buffalo.

Water Buffalo live in South Asia. They tend to have large horns—with wide graceful curves—no hump. Photo by Lewie Embling.

“However, it’s not difficult to distinguish between them, especially if you focus on the three H’s: home, hump, and horns.

“Contrary to the song ‘Home on the Range,’ buffalo do not roam in the American West. Instead, they are indigenous to South Asia (water buffalo) and Africa (Cape buffalo), while bison are found in North America and parts of Europe.

“Another major difference is the presence of a hump. Bison have one at the shoulders while buffalo don’t. The hump allows the bison’s head to function as a plow, sweeping away drifts of snow in the winter.

“The next telltale sign concerns the horns. Buffalo tend to have large horns—some have reached more than 6 feet (1.8 meters)—with very pronounced arcs. The horns of bison, however, are much shorter and sharper.

“Despite being a misnomer—one often attributed to confused explorers—buffalo remains commonly used when referring to American bison, thus adding to the confusion.”

Of course, Britannica is British, lecturing us a bit on our use of the English language. That’s okay, we can take it.

Confusion is not really the issue either. Neither is science—we understand and accept that.

The thing is, we just like the buffalo. And we like to call them that. It fits.

A ‘Harmless Custom’

William T. Hornaday, that great historian of the species, was good-humored about it. He called the animals, Bison in his own writings. Nevertheless, he wrote in 1889:

“The fact that more than 60 million people in this country unite in calling him a buffalo, and know him by no other name, renders it quite unnecessary to apologize for following a harmless custom which has now become so universal—that all the naturalists in the world could not change it if they would!”

Yellowstone Park buffalo graze contentedly on Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux reservation in northeastern Montana. Photo by F. Berg.

Professor Dale F Lott, University of California scientist, puts it even better, I think. He’s not confused about anything– most especially his beloved buffalo!

Born on Montana’s National Bison Range, where his grandfather was Superintendent, he grew up seeing buffalo on the hills every day. His father, from a nearby ranch, worked on the Bison Range—and had married the boss’s daughter.

Professor Lott, who in my opinion surely loved and understood the buffalo as much, if not more, than any other scientist who wrote of them, explains why he uses both terms interchangeably.

“I’ve given a lot of thought to whether I should call my protagonist bison or buffalo,” he explains in the preface to his book: American Bison: A Natural History.

“I decided to use both names.

“My scientist side is drawn to bison. It is scientifically correct and places the animal precisely among the world’s mammals.

“Yet the side of me that grew up American is drawn to buffalo—the name by which most Americans have long known it.

Buffalo honors its long, intense and dramatic relationship with the peoples of North America.”

Lott leaves the discussion there. Enough said.

Ervin Carlson, former Director of the Blackfeet Buffalo Program on the Blackfeet reservation in Northwestern Montana, and past President of the Intertribal Buffalo Council, has put some thought into this issue, too.

He says his people do not call thes animals Bison.

“We think of Bison as a white man’s term.

Ervin Carlson, former president of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, which assists tribes in returning buffalo to Indian country, surveys a new herd released on Cherokee Tribal land in northeast Oklahoma on Oct. 9, 2014. The buffalo were brought from South Dakota by cattle truck. Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman.

“They were everything to us—we survived on them.”

And when the buffalo suddenly vanished, many of the Blackfeet people starved to death. Of course, they have the right to call these beautiful creatures Buffalo!

No less an authority than the National Geographic Magazine, which has published many buffalo articles over the years, has declared the terms Bison and Buffalo interchangeable.

In a recent article on the western lands buffalo controversy, National Geographic stated flatly, “Historians estimate there were tens of millions of bison—the term is interchangeable with buffalo—when Lewis and fellow explorer William Clark traversed the northern plains.” (Feb.2020, p75)

Buffalo is defined in that magazine’s Style Manual as, “Singular and plural. Acceptable synonym for bison, which is the scientifically correct designation.”

Apparently, this means that it got the green light from the style committee, which had given it a close review.

National Geographic in its Feb 2020 issue–on the controversy of the American Prairie Reserve land purchases in central Montana—declares the terms Buffalo and Bison interchangeable. Photo by F. Berg.

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary accepts three categories of “buffalo.” Screenshot.)

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary also accepts both terms, and in one definition defines buffalo as “any of a genus (Bison) of bovids: especially: a large shaggy-maned North American bovid (B. bison) that has short horns and heavy forequarters with a large muscular hump.”

It also defines the term as “the flesh of the buffalo used as food.”Native Americans often prefer to use buffalo names in their own languages when talking with each other, such as the Lakota terms, Tatanka and Pte.

Other people play with the pronunciation a bit.

Fans of the North Dakota State University Bison football team, winner of 16 national championships and having won its past 36 games, the longest streak in FCS history, have their own style of cheering—roaring—with a “Z” sound.

That ”Z” chant resounds throughout football stadiums across the land—as in “Go Bizon.”

‘Buffalo Honors a Long, Intense Relationship’

So, when it all shakes out, what should we call them? These majestic, magnificent creatures of the Plains and Prairies?

My answer is this—a consensus of those I call experts:

Call them whatever you like, the term with which you are most comfortable—or use both interchangeably.

Maybe Buffalo when you’re with friends—or Bison.

Bison when you’re with scientists—or Buffalo.

Whichever feels right to you. But as Hornaday suggests, don’t apologize.

It’s a mistake for Americans to think we “should” call our own Greatest Mammal whatever others tell us we should.

We can say, cheerfully, with a smile, no trace of rancor, “No, I don’t think so.”

To many of us, they are simply buffalo.

This is the name that honors the majestic animal we know.

Buffalo celebrates that “long, intense and dramatic relationship” they have with the Native people and settlers of North America.

And that’s the issue.

Buffalo honors the “long, intense and dramatic relationship” these iconic animals have with North Americans. SD Tourism

Welcome to Buffalo Tales and Trails!

by Francie M. Berg

First published April 28, 2020

Welcome to our first issue of Buffalo Tales & Trails! Everything you ever wanted to know about buffalo!

Thanks for your interest in buffalo! We are bringing you a combination blog and website.

My assistant Ronda Fink and I have produced books and websites, but never before a blog. So this is more than a first issue—it’s a new venture for us!

But not a new topic. Buffalo are old as the hills in the northern plains. We know them. Yet they are still surprising us with their wild nature and amazing capers.

Our mission is first of all—to help young people get to know and love the magnificent buffalo/ bison—America’s new National Mammal! This means teachers need to be involved.

So this is first of all for teachers and their students! Especially Native American students who have a special awe and pride in their buffalo.

And of course, we invite everyone who has a soft spot in your heart for buffalo. Come along on this incredible journey. We won’t let you down!

You can be an expert of sorts on this very specific subject. It’s a fun topic.

The American Bison became the official National Mammal of the United States on May 9, 2016, when President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act. Photo courtesy of SD Game, Fish and Parks, Chris Hull, photographer.

It’s a great milestone for an animal that played a central role in America’s history and culture, helped to shape the lifestyle of Native Americans on the open Plains, and then declined within a hair breadth of becoming extinct.

Today, buffalo live in all 50 states and across Canada, and serve as a symbol of American unity, resilience and healthy lifestyles and communities.

My name is Francie M. Berg. I didn’t know much about buffalo when my husband, a veterinarian, and I moved our family to Hettinger, North Dakota.

Sure I’d seen them in herds here and there, grazing up a green coulee or standing sleepily in a corral.

Much like cattle, I thought. As I said, little did I know.

Where the Buffalo stories Come Together

Then I discovered we’d come to the place where all the buffalo stories come together, now and in the distant past. It happened right here on the western border between North and South Dakota.

This area of the Northern Plains was home to buffalo from ancient times.

Here early hunters, with no horses or guns, ran buffalo off the Shadehill buffalo jump as long ago as 7,500 years, according to archaeologists from the University of North Dakota, among others who checked this out.

The buffalo left the Dakotas in the 1860s, as settlers moved in.

But then the very last wild herd of 50,000 buffalo migrated here in 1880.

That was followed by the last great buffalo hunts—traditional Native hunts with due ceremony. We have first-hand accounts from the hunters themselves.

The last great buffalo hunts were here—traditional Native hunts of the last wild herd of 50,000 head. Buffalo Hunt, by Alfred Jacob Miller 1838. Amon Carter Museum.

Hey, how come no one knows about this? Why isn’t it in the history books?

Then, when they faced extinction, 5 buffalo calves were rescued here on the South Grand River and nourished by a Native American family, the Duprees, who gained international fame for helping to save the species.

They multiplied and today buffalo and deer again roam in our rugged buttes and badlands, forest service lands and grassy plateaus—lands that look much as they did 150 years ago.

Paying more attention, I listened to the stories, read a few more buffalo books. It was an awakening for me.

Wow! These are not cattle! Actually, more like wild animals—deer caught in the headlights.

Buffalo are not cattle! More like wild animals, like deer caught in the headlights. Photo by Denise Anderson, Bismarck.

I’ve been collecting buffalo stories ever since.

For over 35 years I’ve been researching buffalo, reading every source I could find, visiting public, commercial and tribal herds, talking with down-to-earth bison ranchers from across the country, scrambling in the rocks above some of the most famous buffalo jumps in the Rocky Mountains, and writing three books about the majestic buffalo.

We now have a historic tour of 10 famous buffalo sites for you. More about that later.

People tell me that the more you get to know buffalo, the more you love them. It’s true, I’ve found.

Yes, along the way, it seems, I’ve been smitten by these magnificent animals. We’re so glad to have you along for the ride!  And we think you might develop a passion for these majestic animals, too.

Getting to Know you, Our Readers

We want to get to know our readers. You and your family and your friends.

You can help us find the best buffalo stories. There are many.

We’ll also explore the science. Together we’ll venture along new trails. Dare to take least-travelled roads. Ask the perplexing questions.

With your help, we’ll cover a wide spectrum of buffalo lore and learning, and entertain you along the way.

And, yes, please warn us if we seem about to fall off a buffalo jump—or take a disastrously wrong turn  .  .  .

1. First of all, we hope many of our readers are TEACHERS—you smart, busy people, always looking out for new and interesting ways to interact with students. We’re here for you.

2. We also hope to have your Students on board, especially Native American Youth, with your special awe and pride in buffalo.

3. Younger Kids, too—we’ll find some fun videos for you.

Back to school. How about a buffalo story? Photo by Kuanish Reymbaev

4. Also, please join us, Bison Experts—Scientists, College Professors, Forest
Rangers and Native Tribal buffalo managers. You wonderful people. We’re here to learn from you. Please don’t leave us. After all, you might be an expert who—once in awhile—just needs to smell those wild roses blooming along the buffalo pasture fence? We’ll help you!

5. Then of course, we want the Moms and Dads to join us—you busy, busy people,
pulled 6 ways from Sunday, a dozen new stresses every day. We wish you the peace and pleasure of contemplating a buffalo herd right here, online if not for real. You deserve the tranquility of enjoying an engaging buffalo photo or story for a few minutes

6. Also, we plan to have real Buffalo Ranchers on hand, you bold and adventurous women and men—who know your buffalo—and will tell us some of your wonderful stories. (And if we visit, maybe you’ll share a bowl of your delicious buffalo stew with us! Mmmm!) It’s been said, “Everyone who works with buffalo has a story.” We invite you to tell us a few of your own.

Buffalo ranchers Steve and Roxann McFarland work buffalo in the chutes on a cold January morning on their ranch southwest of Hettinger. Photo by Francie Berg.

7. Oh, and we’re not forgetting Grandmas and Grandpas! Looking for a bit of fun and new experiences when you open your computer? Maybe you live alone and it gets lonesome at times, doesn’t it? Need a friend? We promise you’ll meet herds of four-legged friends right here. But a word of caution, don’t expect the cuddly kind of friends! What we’ll bring you are sound and solid, four-feet-on-the-ground, no nonsense, but near-wild animals, who will gain your respect, and I think, in time, your affection.

And some fun stories too!

Enjoy the journey!

Want to Raise your own Buffalo Herd?

Wouldn’t that be fun!! Your own buffalo herd!

My Veterinarian husband—a practical man who soon gained buffalo experience—nixed that idea every time I brought it up.

But there are many hobby buffalo farmers around. If you yearn to have your own buffalo, say, a bull and 2 cows—well, many buffalo ranchers, big and small, started in just that way.

“Buffalo are like rabbits! If you’re not careful, pretty soon you’ve got too many!” A Wyoming rancher warned her friends after watching their herd grow from 1 bull and 2 heifers to 500 animals—outgrowing their pastures. SD Tourism.

They called it a “hobby herd.”

It’s not an entirely bad idea.

Just watch a group of Native American boys and girls visiting their own tribal herd. Note the pride and awe in their eyes, their silence and whispering voices, and you’ll have an idea of the respect these animals command, just by being themselves.

But watch out! Be warned of two things: they multiply and they’re not as gentle as they look.

“Buffalo are like rabbits! If you’re not careful, pretty soon you’ve got too many.” That’s what Toots Marquis, a woman rancher from Gillette, Wyoming, warned her friends.

The grandfather in her family bought a buffalo bull and two heifers, just for the novelty of it, to run with his cattle.

A group of Native American boys and girls from the Oneida Tribe in Wisconsin get a rare close-up view of their tribal herd on a field trip. Courtesy of Oneida Tribe.

In what seemed like only a few years, they multiplied to 500 animals. By the time Marquis was left in charge by herself, she struggled to cull them back and keep the herd at around 75.

And don’t imagine that buffalo are going to be nice and cuddly.

Even playful calves bucking through a herd—don’t think you’ll join them. There’s more than one hostile mother watching, possibly all set to charge.

Don’t even think of posing for a selfie by edging close to a lethargic-looking bull. Remember the warnings, you’ll need something large—like maybe a pickup truck—between you and that big guy, just standing there watching you with what, deceptively, looks like sleepy eyes.

Their sleepy demeanor has fooled many. That bull can spin on a dime and run 40 miles an hour!

Can you? If not, then look out!

One day in 1906, a group of Mexican dignitaries came up the Missouri River in a tour boat to see Scotty Phillip’s buffalo herd in the badlands. They laughed at the big bulls, and boasted—with a bit too much exuberance—that their feisty Mexican fighting bulls would make short work of those lazy, slow moving bulls.

They challenged a bull fight—but that’s another story. We’ll tell you about the Mexican bull fight in Juarez another time (or you can read about it in Buffalo Heartbeats on page 182).

Then there are the fences. Are yours high enough? Strong enough?

You don’t have to own buffalo to enjoy them, of course. You can see them in many state and National Parks in the US and Canada.

In fact, I’m pretty sure everyone who has a passion for them might need to contemplate a live buffalo herd occasionally for a good measure of that peace and tranquility.

People tell me the more you get to know buffalo, the more you will love them. SD Game, Fish, Parks, photo by Chris Hull.

Don’t worry. Most of us can find buffalo around—in public zoos and parks, or private herds that you might view from the road, or nearby tribal herds which you can arrange to visit.

You might be surprised at the bison opportunities near where you live right now. If not, please come to see us on the Northern Plains, or contact your nearest Indian Reservation. They enjoy showing their buffalo herd to visitors.

Happy National Bison Day!!

by Francie M. Berg

It’s coming up! Buffalo Day is November 4, 2023—Always the first Saturday in November. Get your family ready to celebrate!

Remember, in the US and Canada we use the terms Bison and Buffalo interchangeably. And that’s OK. Either fits!!

Some would have us use only the scientific name, Bison. But just think how many cities and towns, counties, creeks, rivers and majestic buttes across this North American continent are named for Buffalo! Would the so-called “experts” have us change them all? Impossible, of course. And how petty to be so limited in our vision!

We’ve been using that term since 1616 when the French explorer, Samuel de Champlain, used it to describe the animal. A few years later, in 1625, Buffalo first appeared in the English language in North America, from the French word, boeuf, a Greek word given to Buffalo by French fur trappers here. Not until 1774—a century and a half later—was Bison first recorded to refer to these mammals in a scientific sense. So are we OK with that?

“We want to go full Buffalo and embrace their unique appearance, calming personalities and utterly cute shapes. Get ready to learn more about them and why we should all try and be more like bison,” says one Buffalo Aficionado.

Anyway,—no apologies. Use whichever you prefer. (Except of course in a scientific discussion.)

How will You Celebrate?

1. Wear a Buffalo T-shirt

Select a T-shirt that shows your love of bison—and wear it proudly! Your kids will enjoy a new Buffalo shirt if they don’t have one! So will Grandpa and Grandma.

South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks, Chris Hull, photographer

2. On National Bison Day—Change your profile picture to Bison

On National Bison Day—November 4, 2023—Change your profile photo on social media to a Buffalo silhouette. It’s an annual event that falls on the first Saturday in November. All Americans can reflect on the impact bison have as a part of our environmental and cultural heritage.

Keep it up for a full month! November is Native American month--you can honor Native Americans at the same time with a nice Buffalo photo. Buffalo are especially revered by Native people—They’ve been central to their survival for centuries as both food and spiritual inspiration.

3. Visit a Buffalo herd

A vast number of wildlife parks, tribal herds and buffalo ranches showcase Buffalo across the US and Canada. Find out if any are located close to where you live. Your children will be delighted to experience the wonder of our latest national icon—the Bison, or Buffalo!

However, take care! Don’t get too close—75 feet or more is recommended! Buffalo are stoic—but don’t try to push them around!

4. Plan a Party

 Celebrate with a family party, kids party, young adult party or just friends getting together.

Buffalo are easy to draw. Design and paint or color a stand-up place card for each guest. Or design some dark brown bushy beards. Tie them on your guests with a shoestring around the ears. Know any Buffalo games?

5. Eat some Bison—yum, yum! Tastes great!

National Bison Association

Delicious! Buffalo Producers celebrate National Bison Month in July as a great time to grill bison meat. Select any tender cut from Prime rib steak to hamburger! You might be amazed that it’s healthy as well as tasting great!

Producers want you to know that bison is the leanest protein available to consumers today, boasting 26% more iron than beef and 87% lower in fat. Bison has 766% more B12 vitamins than chicken, and 32% less fat, based on nutrient data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

6. Watch a Buffalo video

 There are several good possibilities, both short and long videos, on the National Park Service (nps.gov), Public TV, and Wildlife Parks websites. Or you might decide to review some of our Blogs. We’ll have more suggestions for you after our Website goes live in November!

Fun Facts About Bison

1. Buffalo Survive just fine through long, cold Winters

Their hump is composed of muscle supported by long vertebrae, which allows them to use their heads to plow through deep snow and eat grasses below. They also thrive on cottonwood leaves and browse.

National Park Service, Yellowstone Park at Nez Perce, 1966. Mary Meagher, photographer

Fierce blizzards don’t faze them. Buffalo face into a storm rather than walking away from it. Or they lie down, letting it blow over. Thus they avoid being trapped by fences, water holes and creeks as happens to cattle and sheep—which travel with the wind.

2. Calves are born a Different Color than their Moms

Buffalo calves are called ‘red dogs’ by Forest Rangers. When born they are orange or cinnamon colored. It takes 3 to 4 months to grow a hump and spike horns, shed their baby hair and change to a darker color like their mothers. Their heads turn blackish first.

3. Buffalo can outrun most Mammals

Buffalo bulls may look big, slow and lazy. But don’t be fooled! They can spin on a dime, jump straight up and over a 5- or 6-foot fence, leap a 7-foot long jump, run up to 35 miles per hour and are strong swimmers.

In addition, it seems, a Buffalo bull on the fight can tear down most any fence that is in his way! So be sure to place something large—like a pickup truck—between you and that bull!

4. Moms are fiercely Protective of their Young Calves

National Park Service’s BisonBellows-Elk Island

Mothers stay close by their buffalo calves and fight off predators. However, if she has twins, a mother might select only one, walking away from the other. Does she perhaps realize she can care for only one lively calf? Or maybe she instinctively knows she won’t have enough milk to raise two healthy calves?

5. Dads and Uncles still Guard the Herd when they feel Threatened

When predators threaten, Buffalo bulls may circle the group into a tight herd, facing out and pawing dirt, with mothers and calves protected inside the circle.

6. Who really Saved the Buffalo from Extinction?

Those who really saved the Buffalo were ordinary people—westerners, ranchers, all buffalo hunters, with boots—or moccasins—on the ground. Separately, these families cared for and brought buffalo back in significant numbers for survival—onto the western plains and grasslands.

Without them American bison would likely have gone extinct! These 5 family groups saved calves one at a time. All had hunted buffalo, both Native American and white. They saw what was happening to the buffalo and cared about saving them.

• Samuel Walking Coyote (or his son-in-law), and herd purchasers Charles Allard and Michel Pablo in western Montana

• James McKay and neighbors in Manitoba, Canada

• Pete Dupree and herd purchasers, the Scotty Philips in South Dakota

• Charles and Molly Goodnight of Texas

• Buffalo Jones of Kansas

At crisis time—in the 1880s and 1890s—these families were the only ones standing between live buffalo and determined hide and trophy hunters who poached even the few remaining Yellowstone Park herds down to fewer than 25!

7. A President helped Save the Buffalo

The Buffalo Conservationists we know best are President Theodore Roosevelt, William Hornaday and George Bird Grinnell. Together they made a significant impact on wildlife conservation—particularly on buffalo.

Teddy Roosevelt, a frail child, built up his strength and endurance and helped restore buffalo after he traveled to Dakota Territory to hunt them in 1883. He shot an old bull and stayed to set up a cattle ranching enterprise. On his western ranch Roosevelt soon realized that the elk, bighorn sheep and buffalo that he so admired would not survive relentless overhunting. He grew increasingly convinced of the need to protect the buffalo and provide large, safe places for them and other wildlife to live.

As president—from 1901 to 1909—he became one of the most powerful voices in the history of American conservation and earned himself a place on Mt. Rushmore, SD, as this country’s greatest champion of public lands. Roosevelt created the United States Forest Service and established 150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, 4 national game preserves and set aside 230 million acres of public land. He worked with Congress to establish 5 national parks and dedicated 18 national monuments.

8. Native Americans are Interrelated culturally with Bison

The history of Native Americans and bison is culturally interrelated. Bison have been integral to tribal culture, providing Native people with food, clothing, fuel, tools, shelter and spiritual value from time immemorial.

Established in 1992, the InterTribal Buffalo Council works with the National Park Service to transfer excess Buffalo from national parks to tribal lands. It also gives assistance in management of herds and how to integrate traditional values to the experience.

9. Bison have poor Eyesight

Buffalo cannot focus well and are known to have poor eyesight. But with one eye on each side of their heads they are said to have good peripheral vision, able to keep track of 90% of the area that surrounds them. Handy for checking on lurking wolves!

Buffalo do have excellent senses of smell and hearing and communicate well with their herd. Cows and calves communicate using pig-like grunts and during mating season, bulls can be heard bellowing across long distances.

10. Bison have been around for Ages

National Park Service, photographer J Schmidt1977

These giants have such a special place in the country's history and ative American cultures and for good reason. They are fiercely protective yet calm animals that will do anything to protect their herds and their calves. They are truly North American treasures!

11. Buffalo are Social Creatures

National Park Service, North Rim of the Grand Canyon

They like living together in herds. But not just any group—their own herd. And not too large a herd—30 to 60 seems a good size. For most of the year, the buffalo sort themselves into “cow groups,” or maternal herds, and “bull groups.”

An older grandmother is the usual leader of the herd. She leads them to water at the time that seems right to her. Bull calves are allowed to stay in the herd with their mothers until they become too large and aggressive. Then they are kicked out of the maternal herd to join bachelor groups that wander at a short distance from the main herd.

In the wild herds of long ago, with roughly equal numbers of males and females, bachelor herds were known to be large.

Historically in late July and August, the great herds came together for rut, or breeding season. Today in managed herds, young bulls are usually sold off long before age three. They sell well in the market place for meat or as potential herd bulls. In Native tribal herds young bulls are especially desirable to provide meat for naming feasts and community gatherings. By giving of their meat, they honor the person celebrated, especially when the honored one is a young man.

This prevents buffalo herds from out-growing their pastures. Otherwise, the herd will double and redouble in a few years, soon over-grazing their pastures. Having fewer bulls also means less fighting, and makes breeding easier for the dominant bulls. The oldest bulls often range far from their home herd.

12. Buffalo Enjoy a Wallow

National Park Service

A little dust or mud won’t hurt. Called wallowing, bison roll in the dirt to get rid of biting insects and help shed their winter coat. Male bison also wallow during mating season to leave behind their scent and display dominance.

13. Watch Buffalo’s Tail for Warning

You can judge a Buffalo’s mood by its tail. When it hangs down and switches naturally, the buffalo is usually calm. If the tail is standing straight up, watch out! It may be ready to charge. No matter what a bison’s tail is doing, remember that they are unpredictable and can charge at any moment. Every year, there are regrettable accidents caused by people getting too close to these massive animals. It’s great to love the bison, but love them from the distance of at least 75 feet.

14. Buffalo eat Grass, Weeds, Browse

Pass the salad, please. Bison primarily eat grasses, weeds and leafy plants—typically foraging for 9-11 hours a day. That’s where the bison’s large protruding shoulder hump comes in handy during the winter. It allows them to swing their heads from side-to-side to clear snow -- especially for creating foraging patches. Learn how bison's feeding habits can help ensure diversity of prairie plant species  after a fire.

15. Average Lifespan 10 to 20 Years

Bison can live up to 20 years old, but some live to be much older, especially with good care on ranches.

A buffalo cow may weigh 1,000 pounds, while the bull weighs twice as much, or up to 2,000 pounds! Cows begin breeding at the age of 2. For males, the prime breeding age is 6 to 10 years.

16. Improving Soil

Bison are known to play an important role in improving soil and creating beneficial habitat while holding significant economic value for private producers and rural communities.

17. Ancient Bison came from Asia

The American bison’s ancestors can be traced to southern Asia thousands of years ago. Bison made their way to America by crossing the ancient land bridge that connected Asia with North America during the Pliocene Epoch, some 400,000 years ago. These ancient animals were much larger than the iconic bison we know and love today.