Discovering Our Buffalo Legacy
Written by Francie M. Berg
The Johnson buffalo herd grazes a large pasture here. In the distance, at center, is Shadehill Lake and Shadehill Buffalo Jump. Photo courtesy of Donna Keller.
The River Grande waters a good chunk of North and South Dakota—and from time immemorial it has always been the place where Buffalo live, graze and multiply.
The South Grande in spring. Photo courtesy of Francie M Berg.
For those of us who have put down roots here in the Hettinger-Lemmon-Bison-Buffalo area, we can take pride in the fact that this is the ONE PLACE in the world where the entire buffalo story comes together. This is our Legacy!
Here are centuries-old buffalo jumps and traps. Three of the Last Great Traditional Native American Hunts of an Ancient Species, noble and majestic.
But, it seemed, inevitably the buffalo were bound for extinction. William Hornaday wrote his 1887 buffalo report, published as a book in 1889, with that in mind.
And then almost suddenly—came the amazing Rescue of Buffalo calves. Rebirth of healthy herds. And their flourishing again today in tribal herds as well as private and public herds.
Healthy buffalo herds flourish today in tribal lands, in private and public herds. Ft. Peck, Montana, tribal herd. Photo courtesy of FM Berg.
Surely ours is a Legacy of history, culture and adventure. We have stories to learn. Stories to share. We need only discover what happened by the River Grande over the centuries. For that, we need to learn from oral histories of Native Americans.
When we moved here to Hettinger, in 1966 my husband Bert and I—with our two oldest children—would now and then, see people going over recently-plowed fields by Hiddenwood Cliff with metal detectors.
They searched for ancient arrowheads, military buttons and buffalo bones—near Hiddenwood where Native American hunting parties and General Custer had camped and left treasures from long ago.
Migration of the Last Herd
My interest in Buffalo began as a kid when my younger sister Anne and I found a Buffalo skull.
After the snow melted that spring of 1947, it sent rushing waters to flush out dry creek beds. We were riding the higher reaches of our range 10 miles east of Miles City, Montana looking for a lost heifer.
In a glint of bright sunlight we saw something peeking out from under a sagebrush that had been partly torn loose from a sandy bank.
“What’s that?” Anne circled her horse across the gravel creek bed.
“Looks like a bone—a horn.”
Sliding off our horses we scrambled up the bank for a closer look.
Yes! Not just a horn—but a horn solidly attached to the head. As we freed it from the big sagebrush tangle, out came a nearly perfect skull with matching stout curved horns—gleaming white in the sun. We hefted the weight of it—bigger and bulkier than any skull we had ever seen.
A relic of long ago—a buffalo skull! The black horn caps had loosened and washed away in the 70-some years since wild buffalo had roamed these ranges.
We’d seen the famous photos of dead buffalo, slaughtered across this very range by hide hunters, as photographed by L.A. Huffman, who set up his studio in Miles City just in time to record that final kill.
Sitting Bull was there at the end. He and his party of hunters came with their families from their agency west of Mobridge to the western edge of their Great Sioux Reservation and slaughtered the last buffalo grazing there. It was October 1883.
Above and Below: Photographer L.A. Huffman arrived in Miles City Montana in time to film the buffalo slaughter in eastern Montana. Huffman photos from 1880.
Later we learned the Hettinger area on the River Grande was where this last big herd of buffalo came in their final desperate flight from big guns in 1880.
The southern herd was already gone. Slaughtered in the mid-1870s. All buffalo were gone from Kansas to Texas as decimated by white hide hunters.
Buffalo didn’t migrate north in the fall. But by all accounts, these last buffalo did. This last desperate herd of around 100,000 buffalo were not seeking warmer climate that fall, but rather, safety.
Blazing guns right behind, they trekked up from Wyoming and hit the little cow-town of Miles City, which had sprung up to fill needs of the new military Fort Keogh. Built at the mouth of Tongue River in the year following General Custer’s disastrous Battle of the Little Big Horn, it was becoming a thriving cow-town.
When the buffalo hit the Yellowstone River, half the herd plunged in, swam across and travelled north—right into the rifles of hundreds of hide hunters. That half did not survive long. Within months all were dead.
Half the last big herd of about 100,000 buffalo swam the Yellowstone River near Miles City, Montana and travelled north into rifle fire from hundreds of hide hunters. The other 50,000 stayed on the south side and travelled north and then east into Lakota reservation lands in Dakota Territory. Photos courtesy National Park Service.
Some wild instinct led the other half—the last big herd of some 50,000—more directly north and east—on our side of the Yellowstone. They then cut across the corner of Montana.
Apparently, they turned east where the Powder River and O’Fallon Creek flowed into the Yellowstone River, then followed those plateaus and waterways into Dakota Territory.
This was about 150 miles east of Miles City on the border of what became North and South Dakota. It was where these last 50,000 from the great northern herd made their last stand.
There they found safety for a time in the Short Pines of the Slim Buttes. And just beyond that, on the diminished Great Sioux Indian Reservation itself.
Was the bull of our old skull part of that last desperate flight for a place of sanctuary? That last migration in the dead of early winter—December 1880?
Anne and I wrapped the skull in a jacket and tied it behind my saddle.
At home we cleared a place for it in Mom’s flower garden near our front door, next to a yellow rosebush.
Many times our family and visitors speculated over how that bull had lived and died.
Had he grown old and weary, tagging along behind that very last herd and met his fate when attacked by hungry wolves? Alone, he couldn’t have lasted long.
Packs of wolves followed each buffalo herd, attacking those who lagged behind, too old or weak to defend themselves. Lithograph from George Catlin, ‘North American Portfolio.
Years later when my family moved to Hettinger—in July 1966—my husband Bert, as the new veterinarian was eager to help local ranchers care for their cattle, horses, sheep, sheep dogs—and, yes, a few herds of buffalo!
We didn’t know we were coming to the place where those very buffalo from Miles City had made their last stand here on the Grand River—or La Riverre Grande as the early French fur traders called it.
We also didn’t know that my grandparents—the Tom Barretts had staked out their first homestead claim on Lodgepole Creek where it flowed into the South Grand River. They lived in a dugout in the side of a hill. To learn more about the Barretts, click here./p>
At their new homestead on the River Grande my grandparents lived in a dugout in the side of a hill with their 4 young children. This photo could have been one of their neighbors who took the opportunity to set out their finest for a traveling photographer. Photo US Dept of Agriculture.
As newcomers to Hettinger we heard a few rumblings from old-timers. “The last big buffalo hunts were here!”
“What? What do you mean?” we asked. "The last hunts where? In North America? In North Dakota?”
“I don’t know—that’s what they say,” came the inevitable answer.
A few old-timers who lived at Haynes—a little town halfway between Hettinger and Lemmon SD—knew about this Legacy and its stories, in part, although they were not written down.
We discovered that bits and pieces were passed down word-of-mouth from grandparents—who dug outskulls and bones to line their flower beds.
The small town of Haynes today keeps up its park with church bells, but the elevator and school are no longer viable entities—they may serve other purposes. A few old timers at Haynes knew stories of the Hiddenwood Buffalo Hunt and told them to grandchildren. Photo FMBerg.
Local people insisted these were the last hunts. But I wanted to know more. What did that mean? I had to read it in a book and started a search.
Sure enough, several books held promise—claiming special knowledge of the very last hunts. But their ‘last hunts’ always turned out to be big guns, big slaughter, rotting carcasses left across the Plains—in Kansas or somewhere even farther south.
Everyone knew the shameful history it seemed.
Even Canada geese could hardly nest in North Dakota at that time because of overhunting. The new settlers were desperate for meat.
Then one day, browsing our local library, I came across a little-known book of memoirs, My Friend the Indian, by James McLaughlin, Indian Agent at Ft. Yates.
Flipping pages, back to front, I found myself reading an amazing tale in a chapter called simply ‘The Great Buffalo Hunt.’
Suddenly there it was—all laid out, step by step—the Hiddenwood hunt of June 1882 told in complete and fascinating detail by a man who was here and on that hunt.
McLaughlin described the showy march of the Native hunters riding out of Fort Yates—resplendent in their best hunting attire.
Six hundred mounted riders wove in and out among people walking and riding in buckboard wagons. Their prancing horses painted in traditional ways, they struck out for ancient buffalo hunting grounds—to what is now our Hettinger community.
McLaughlin told of the trip in detail. Religious traditions and prayers for success were honored at significant stops along the way.
He and his teenage son hunted here, with 2,000 Native Americans, right outside our living room window, riding up Hiddenwood Creek, which runs through our town. He described it all in his book of memoirs “My Friend the Indian.”
The Scouts—8 young men selected for good moral character, honesty and hunting ability—took an oath, smoked the pipe and rode out ahead of the Ft. Yates hunters to find the herd. On the 4th morning out they flashed a mirror signal from 10 miles off: “Huge herd of buffalo within sight!” Painting by CM Russell 1900, courtesy of Amon Carter Museum.
Later another jewel appeared in a dusty collection. The memoirs of Congregational missionary, Thomas Riggs, stationed at Oahe near Pierre, offered another Buffalo Hunt section.
Again, an amazing story, told by an articulate and sympathetic man who came in December 1880 to the Slim Buttes—with a small band of traditional Lakota hunters on a long, three-month winter hunting adventure.
Both these hunts were traditional, conducted with religious fervor and ancient ceremony. All three, including the buffalo’s last stand—the Sitting Bull hunt in 1883—were on or near the Great Sioux Reservation of North and South Dakota.
Both fit perfectly into William Hornaday’s well-documented history of 1889, The Extermination of the American Bison; With a Sketch of its Discovery and Life History, written as an official report in 1887 and published two years later as a 170-page book.
These 3 books are the source of information for the 3 Last Hunts on the Great Sioux Reservation in ND and SD (1880-1883). They are by James McLaughlin, ‘My Friend the Indian;Indian’ (1910); Thomas Riggs, ‘Sunrise to Sunset’ (as told to his niece Margaret Kellogg Howard in 1927); Wm Hornaday, ‘Extermination of the American Bison’ (published in 1889, as the 1887 report of the Smithsonian National Museum).
After the wild herds were gone the Smithsonian Museum sent Hornaday—their leading taxidermist—out west to report on how the disastrous buffalo slaughter could have possibly happened and to bring back some museum-worthy carcasses, if possible.
In researching his book, Hornaday really thought he was writing about the final hours of what he called “this magnificent animal.”
Determined to get it right, he spared no effort in contacting every possible source of buffalo knowledge, from Army officers at far-flung western forts to fur traders, railroaders, hide hunters and cowboys.
Hornaday learned that the end came right here on the North Grande, near what is now Hettinger, but offered few details.
Except he wrote that Sitting Bull was here at the end and his band killed the last 1,200 buffalo. In fact he recorded the exact dates—October 12 and 13, 1883.
These last buffalo hunt details were virtually unknown in the 1980s, when I read these books. Only a few pioneers and early settlers, who settled here on what had first been designated Indian reservation lands by treaty, knew of the history and they didn’t write it down.
So the best buffalo hunting stories I could find were hid deep in obscure books of memoirs by McLaughlin and Riggs.
Someone needed to put this together on paper.
This is our Legacy, those of us who lived here now and in the past—who’s children were born and educated here. I couldn’t let it disappear again—as it nearly had atone time.
A Historic Site
We also needed a commemorative site—so people would know where that 1882 hunt happened that McLaughlin described—in the wide fertile valley near Haynes, ND—halfway between Hettinger and Lemmon, SD.
With farming, that valley was now filled with rock piles gathered from tepee rings and ceremonials that once marked those famous Native hunting lands.
Our Dakota Buttes Visitors Council (DBVC), of which I’d been a charter member since its beginning, agreed to take this on. One of our first projects was designing and setting up 6 billboards feting the “Last Great Buffalo Hunts.”
My son-in-law Todd Halunen, an architect, sketched us a plan for the Historic Site. The Visitors Council guys, Jim Goplin and his crew, did the cement work. Gladys Wamre donated the land; her son Duane, a surveyor in Dickinson, took care of the legaldetails.
Our historic site on US Highway 12, halfway between Hettinger and Lemmon, highlights the June 1882 great hunt by 2,000 men and women from Ft. Yatesas described by Indian Agent James McLaughlin. In 3 days the 600 mounted riders killed 5,000 buffalo, and together the 2,000 women and men from Ft. Yates worked hard for a week or more to preserve the hides and meat. Photos by FMBerg
We planted trees, watered and hoed weeds through a couple of hot, dry summers with Duane Wamre’s help and water truck.
I designed signs and wrote grants to pay for them. Mark Baker located an authentic Lakota tepee on the reservation, set it up with Native help and maintained it for many years.
David Seifert donated and came down one morning with his neighbor and two large petrified wood rocks from his rocky hilltop farther north, along with the equipment to place them.
It was all worthwhile the day Jeff Rotering brought Haynes people and other visitors to the creek site in a school bus. They got settled, then I walked up out of the creek bed in my buckskinner garb.
I told McLaughlin’s story of that 3-day hunt in which Native women had important tasks—to dry tons of meat and hides from the 5,000 buffalo killed—just as important as the work of the hunters.
Afterwards, Gladys Wamre told me, with hand over her heart, “I’ll NEVER FORGET that moment you walked up out of the creek! My heart just leaped.”
She had deeded the site to us. And we dedicated the site to her.
We arranged several Black Powder Shoots and tours over the years for Buckskinner groups at what we now call ‘The Buffalo’s Last Stand at the Hunt Site of Sitting Bull and his band,.’ (Once known as ‘The Butchering Site.) Photos by Dakota Buttes Visitors Council.
Francie Berg in the doeskin dress made special for her.
Learning Book Publishing
From these three sources came a carefully-researched booklet, in which I brought together for the first time the full story of the last stand of the American buffalo and their final dramatic moments.
By this time I had a publishing business of my own and a part time assistant to help with the brand new computer skills just beginning to amaze us with the printing we could accomplish all on our own. To learn more of Francie’s publishing history, click here.
In the mid-1990s our Dakota Buttes Visitors Council donated copies of my booklets titled (Italic) The Last Great Buffalo Hunts: Traditional Hunts in 1880 to 1883 by Teton Lakota People just off the press, to local schools. We sent copies to the Native American schools in ND and SD—with an offer to send more free of charge.
After all, as I had hoped¸ the book turned out to be filled with stories that the Native kids own grandparents told them. That’s where I found the stories on the Last Great Traditional buffalo Hunts—right here from neighbors, both Native and white and the three books.
Our tourism group started taking people on bus tours of our three Historic Last Great Traditional Native Hunts. Free of course. We were all volunteers.
For the first time local people—and readers throughout the country—learned the full story of the last stand of the American buffalo and these last dramatic moments. It was the majestic Legacy of the River Grande!
Until then, somehow this final triumph of the buffalo saga had fallen through the cracks in our national and state histories. It was a story not generally known by anyone except perhaps some old-timers from Haynes.
Still, it seemed like the end of the story.
But wait! There’s more.
I started collecting Buffalo stories for another book. Marvelous stories. Word of mouth stories. It was like peeling an onion, one more layer beneath another as layers unfolded, one by one.
Our tour groups wanted to know more. So did I!
By this time we were telling the stories in our local schools and also taking high and junior high students out to some of our historic Buffalo Sites on field trips.
One morning we had a busload of 7th graders. We stopped at my favorite spot on top of the ridge at the ‘Last Buffalo Stand—the Sitting Bull Hunt site.’
Teachers handed each student a sack lunch and they disappeared—hiking eagerly in various directions to explore shady draws and rock-strewn hill tops. I wondered if they’d come back.
But they did! All returned within the hour. Eyes shining and bubbling over with stories of their discoveries.
Over the years our four kids and friends spent hours hiking local Forest Service badlands and buttes, enjoying rocks, caves and evidence of trails and homesteads found here and there.
Bert and I purchased pasture land on the North Grande River for summering cattle and horses. We watched the river rise in springtime—often raging through what neighbors called our “Oxbow” turn in the river, sweeping away our fences.
Our kids fished in the North Grande, paddled small boats and inner tubes and camped on the muddy shores.
One day I said to my husband, “Why don’t we raise some buffalo?”
Made sense to me. We lived at the edge of town, where people could easily drive by—or park to watch buffalo mothers nuzzling their red-gold calves.
But by then Bert was having none of it. Count him as an experienced learner at rounding up and working with buffalo.
He’d already discovered that a buffalo bull—if he chooses—can break through most any fence he encounters.
“I don’t think so,” he intoned in his new-found wisdom.
“Why not?”
“Too dangerous!”
End of that idea. I was overruled!
In Government Pastures
But I was intrigued. As our kids grew older and more adventurous, they loved exploring and camping in the hills of our lands on the Grande and what everyone called Government Pastures.
There are a number of these federally-owned pastures along the South Dakota state line, close to where we live, separated here and there by private land and ranches.
Land on which the new owners could not pay their taxes during the drought years of the depression—which was through most of the 1920s and 1930s. Hard times for settlers from farther east—who might not have expected this!
Our kids and friends enjoyed hiking and exploring the rocky buttes—which look today much as they have for thousands of years. Photo by FMBerg.
Our family learned these Government pastures were Multi-Purpose—for public recreation as well as cattle grazing.
United States Forest Rangers had rules—but also amazing flexibility. With a car or pickup you are required to stay on the designated road and of course shut any gate you opened.
But we could hike, bike (non-motorized), ride horseback anywhere in the pastures, even camp where ever we liked for free, exploring the rugged badlands and scenic draws. These ancient buttes look much as they have for thousands of years.
Amazingly, I discovered we had a real buffalo Jump at Shadehill. We didn’t call it that, because I wasn’t sure. People said it was a ‘mass of bones’ on the open side of a steep cliff.
“Maybe it was lightening that chased buffalo over that cliff,” they said.
Dakota people don’t boast or brag much. So they—and we—dared not claim it for a buffalo Jump. Our family came too late to see the bones but I learned what happened to them when interviewing an old-time rancher in the neighborhood.
The rancher, Don Merriman told me it happened during wartime—World War II, in the 1940s.
His neighbor, the land owner, bulldozed all the bones out and shipped them by train to west coast munition factories. The phosphorus in bones were used to manufacture bombs and other explosives.
People on the home front did all they could to help win that war! We girls had hoed sugar beets, and his neighbor sacrificed the best part of his buffalo Jump.
Before that happened, those rust-colored buffalo bones showed up in two wide bands—totaling 16 ft deep and 100 feet long across the face of Shadehill Cliff. My Aunt Margaret Durick Barrett and her sister Dorothy Kroft saw them during a White Butte school field trip when they were in elementary school.
Then all-of-a-sudden one day I noticed the South Dakota Game and Fish Recreation that manages Shadehill Park and Lake had planted a new sign at the edge of the lake—with a picture of buffalo jumping off that very cliff and a message that this was indeed a Buffalo Jump.
Three archaeology teams had reported their findings—one each from the University of North Dakota, SD Game, Fish and Parks and the US Dept of Interior Bureau of Reclamation.
UND even published a book of their findings. And local Perkins County Agent Vince Gunn—who lived most of his life across the lake from the jump—lent me his copy.
Without horses, ancient hunters for 7,000 years risked their lives during buffalo drives to prevent them from turning back at the cliff’s edge. Painting from Jack Brink’s book “Imagining Head-Smashed in,” with permission from the author.
Although the bones were gone. our jump was real. The official sign verified it!
And buffalo were still alive here by the River Grande in several private herds!
The experts’ dig at our buffalo jump at Shadehill Lake revealed that primitive hunters used it likely 7,000 years ago. Wow!
Along with ancient buffalo bones my grandparents’ homestead was buried there under the lake by dammed-up waters.
The Shadehill buffalo jump is across on the south side, as depicted in the second sign from the left. The older stone monument at the far left honors Hugh Glass—who was attacked in those same trees by the jump in 1823 by a grizzly bear and left for dead by Major Henry’s fur-trading party. Photo FMBerg.
Over the years I had located 8 historic buffalo sites in our area (plus 2 not far off, but in ND). Our Dakota Buttes Visitors Council agreed to order and place a durable metal sign at each. Of course, our crew had to jump through a few hoops to officially establish them.
Most were on US Forest Service lands. And they had rules. On their end, decisions had to be cleared all the way through Washington, DC.
But the local Forest Rangers in the Lemmon office sent in the paperwork for us.
The Slim Buttes with a view of its huge outcroppings called ‘Castles and Steamships! We labelled the south highway with a Number 4 Site to place our DBVC yellow Historic sign and the closer highway 4b. Below is the Dakota Buttes Visitors Council sign depicting the area. Photos FMB.
I met with Forest Rangers in their Lemmon headquarters several times through the years working all this out. And a couple of times drove with those same Rangers to potential spots where we pondered the pros and cons of what might have happened there.
At times, we also relied on the Forest Service ranchers’ group—the Grand River Grazing Association—for help. They upgraded some of the ‘Designated Roads,,’ smoothed muddy rutted roads, dealt with cattle guards and helped us decide where to place our DBVC yellow Historic Site signs for tourists.
One marvelous day our family friend Otto Schwarz, who worked for the Ranchers Grazing Assoc. left his fence-fixing project to speed up and down over the hills in his pickup with his wife Connie and I on a hair-raising ride—over what have to be some of the roughest hills and valleys around! Mostly in Pasture 9.
We were looking for a likely spot where the Duprees might have come over the ridge from their home at the fur-trading post on the Cheyenne River, at the mouth of Cherry Creek, in a buckboard wagon to save new-born buffalo calves in the spring of 1881 or 1882.
We found it! A perfect place on the South Grande where they ‘might have come—or within a few miles of this place.’
Likely they came that next spring in 1881 after their long, cold, 3-month buffalo winter hunt in the pine -covered Slim Buttes.
Of course, there are no buffalo in the Government Pastures now. Grazing only for cattle. It’s a Forest Service rule that was worked out with certain cattle ranchers many years ago.
But 5 or 6 families do own buffalo in our area and run them on private land.
There have always been buffalo on the River Grande. As we note: the Grande River valley is no doubt the only place in the world that has always raised buffalo and probably always will!
Always it seems there have been buffalo grazing and multiplying on La River Grande. Our visitors always love best a tour that includes a herd of live buffalo. They stay on the bus, which stops while the feed wagon circles the herd and Buffalo come on the run. Photo by Ronda Fink.
Now some of the herds belong to white ranchers and some Native, since the original Great Sioux Reservation is close by. Several herds are nearby in state and national parks in North and South Dakota.
I picked up a few buffalo stories from these ranchers. They are brave people, the heroic people who raise buffalo. The animals they work with are huge—and they don’t suffer fools.
I noticed these buffalo ranchers are patient, as well as courageous and calm. They don’t yell at their livestock— like cowboys do. (Oh yes, cowboys yell!)
But buffalo owners don’t shout, push or hurry their livestock. Why is that? Hmmm.
It’s their stories that stir the soul. The mystique of the buffalo. Especially when those stories are told by Native people.
For them buffalo are a long-standing Legacy with great significance and deep cultural and religious meaning.
Buffalo are Alive here on the River Grande! Always have been. Likely always will be!
Buffalo hang out near the pines on private land. Photo courtesy of NPS.
Fortunately, William Hornaday had it wrong. He did not write the last chapter on dying buffalo in 1887, as he’d expected!
Most marvelous—was the miracle of how buffalo evaded extinction and the people who saved them. Surprisingly, our depressing buffalo story ended well after all!
Yes!!
Buffalo Calf Rescue
Before the buffalo were all gone, five families rescued buffalo calves and nourished them into viable herds that were healthy and multiplied.
I was delighted to discover that one was a Native Lakota family from this area—the Duprees. Just before the end, they rescued 5 calves on the South Grande Riverre. (As verified in the North Dakota Schools curriculum.)
The Dupree’s long cold winter hunt in the Slim Buttes lasted from December through February in 1880 and 1881.
Then either the next spring or the following one, the Dupree men and probably their sisters too—theirs was a large family—had traveled some 50 or 60 miles in a buckboard wagon from their fur-trading homes at the mouth of Cherry Creek on the Cheyenne River.
A two-day trip with team and wagon.
Back home they found range cows to mother up the young calves they captured.
Pete Dupree must have done things right to avoid the typically high death loss of orphan buffalo calves.
Because his herd kept growing. By the time Pete died in 1898 his buffalo herd had increased to 83.
For many other would-be rescuers, small calves died of starvation before they received the nourishment needed.
And most horrifying: Cows and older calves that were roped simply stiffened out and died of a heart attack instead of giving in to ‘being saved.’
Young calves need colostrum—a mother’s first milk—to survive. The Duprees mothered them up successfully with range cows. Photos courtesy SD Game, Fish and Parks and NPS.
Five North American groups and families are honored as pivotal in saving the buffalo from extinction. They are:
1. The Pete Dupree and Scotty Philip families in South Dakota
2. Samuel Walking Coyote or his son-in-law and herd purchasers Charles Allard and Michel Pablo in western Montana
3. James McKay, a Metis, and neighbors of Manitoba, Canada
4. The Charles Goodnights of Texas, and
5. CJ “Buffalo” Jones of Kansas
Three had Native American roots—the Duprees and Scotty Philip (married to a Sioux woman) , as well as Samuel Walking Coyote and James McKay.
All were western ranchers as well as buffalo hunters.
Apparently the Duprees were the only rescuers who kept their buffalo herd in their home area—on the Great Sioux Reservation where they had free grazing. Theirs is a heroic story we can all be proud of!
Without these 5 family groups we’d have no live buffalo to enjoy visiting and telling stories about today.
Conservationists including easterners William Hornaday, President Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell played a part too, by making sure buffalo herds live safely in refuges and wildlife parks.
But without the rescue and nourishing of newborn calves by ordinary people in the west—without boots and moccasins on the ground—those efforts would have failed!
Saving the History
My next book was intended to celebrate the buffalo—as well as Native people of the Plains who for thousands of years hunted buffalo on foot and carried their possessions with them in dog travois.
My former editor and co-worker Kendra Rosencrans, glanced at the contents and told me bluntly. “People don’t read books anymore!”
Ouch!
But I took her advice and finished the Self-Guided Tour book first—in 2017. ‘Buffalo Trails in the Dakota Buttes’ is an action book to take along while visiting the 8 historic stops in our area and 2 nearby sites.
Sites 9 visits two Lakota Standing Rock tribal herds fairly close to the highway near Fort Yates. Then many travel on to Site 10—the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown—both in North Dakota.
As it turned out I wrote three buffalo books.
1. In the 1990s, a 46-page booklet on ‘The Last Great Buffalo Hunts: Traditional Hunts in 1880 to 1883 by Teton Lakota People.’
2. A Tour Guide of 10 Historic sites ‘Buffalo Trails in the Dakota Buttes: Self-Guided Tour,’ 2017.
3. And the rest of the story: ‘Buffalo Heartbeats Across the Plains: The Last Great Hunts and Saving the Buffalo,’ 2018
Our three books that focus on early Buffalo history. The ancient stories are told from oral history by Native Americans.
Seems like our Native American friends can name every butte between here and Bismarck!
And on the BSC buses from Bismarck in June, 2022 they told stories about what happened on these buttes—including strange legends of mysterious ‘little people” inhabiting some of the buttes.
We need to hear those stories too—in their own voices. Yes!
The cultural stories are still here, safe with Native Americans. So let’s listen!
There are plenty of stories of our own buffalo experiences for the rest of us to delve iinto.
Truly, the almost-tragic Buffalo story of saving the buffalo, as we know it is one of the greatest conservation stories of all time.
Now Buffalo are coming home to Tribal Reservations, Wildlife Preserves, National Parks and private ranching. Photo by Chris Hull with SDGFP.
And now Buffalo are coming home in great numbers to Indian Reservations, to Wildlife Preserves, National Parks and private ranching.
This is our Legacy! All of us who live here and put our roots down here—whether it’s been 7,000 years or only a few!
Sharing the Story
When Bismarck State College decided in early 2020 to put on a Bison Symposium led by their retiring director Dr. Larry Skogen, we got involved. In fact, we may have helped inspire the whole thing.
After all, Larry grew up in Hettinger, where his parents ran a hardware store. He knew something of our buffalo heritage. This is his Legacy too!
Our Bismarck State College tour bus visiting the Blair Johnson herd near Hettinger. Herd Manager Jim Strand circled the herd with his feed wagon and the buffalo came running. Here, Jim steps on the bus and explains how he handles buffalo. Since they can be dangerous if stressed, our guests stay on bus and take close-up photos and videos to their heart’s content through the large windows. Photo by Kathy Berg Walsh.
What other university institution has dared to put on a three-day event that includes all we poured into this one?
Academic speeches. Native Americans telling how their culture is still intimately bound up with the buffalo. History tours of where it all happened.
A bit of hiking for those who are able. A tour through a live buffalo herd. And a lot of great bison meals including a final Bison Stroganoff dinner!
Travelers on the June 22-25, 2022, Bismarck State College Bison Symposium enjoy their sack lunches in the shady park at the Shadehill Recreation site across the lake from the Buffalo Jump. At table in foreground are Lakota storytellers Dakota Goodhouse (at far left) and Kevin Locke (center). They rode the two buses, told stories and history and identified ancient landmarks on the drive from Bismarck. Photo FMB.
Hoop dancer Kevin Locke demonstrated his hoop dancing skills one evening. Photo FMB.
Most visitors enjoyed a bit of hiking along the draws and rocky hilltops at the Buffalo Last Stand and Sitting Bull Hunt Site. Photo by James Kambeitz, with permission.
The second day of the BSC Symposium was spent on a bus tour in the Hettinger-Lemmon area.
About 80 people rode the two big travel buses that day to our designated historic sites.
The visitors said they loved the tour, the Native storytellers and driving among 400 live buffalo while the herd manager, Jim Strand circled the herd with the feed wagon.
“When will you do this again?” they asked.
Whew! We were exhausted. But it gave us an idea.
Polishing our Legacy
These questions led to a series of sessions around my kitchen table. A few local people concerned about the loss of our buffalo history.
A working group that gathered and talked about what we could do. We all wanted to know—what makes sense—and where to take our stories—where to start?
There are more stories in these buttes and grasslands. Of course there are. We haven’t heard them all yet.
We haven’t even told all the stories we know. Maybe there is something we can do about our Legacy before it all disappears in smoke, as it once almost did. To learn more about Buffalo Grande’s team, click here.
We have a Legacy, sure enough, and exciting Buffalo stories worth telling. But frankly, we are already stretched too thin.
What we need is tourists coming from afar—appreciating our long buffalo history and modern day buffalo ranchers. We have confidence visitors from around the world will love this. But how do we make it happen?
Our mayor Jim Lindquist—a very perceptive young man—said, “Wait! We need to build a good Website. That’s how people get their information today!
“But it has to be good!” he insisted.
Those of us a generation or two older did not see it at first.
However, Val Braun and I sat down together for an afternoon, again at my kitchen table. Like me, she’s a former County Extension Agent and Consumer Science teacher— meaning we have learned to work with a wide variety of community people.
We listed all the things we’d want to have on a website. And surprisingly, we discovered ALL of them could first be revealed on a well-designed professional website.
Could they be later backed up with more of the real thing? Of course!
But Jim was right. First things first.
Epilogue: Trails Impact our Legacy
Oh Yes! There’s at least one more Historic place I’ve wanted to visit.
And now I have been there. Honest to goodness Buffalo Trails trod centuries ago and Buffalo Wallows, likely used by large migrating Buffalo herds.
Only a few miles north of Hettinger, near the Cedar Creek.
My family has been friends with these ranching families to the north, along the Cedar, for at least 40 years—or more!
We’ve been invited to take this trip for at least forty years—to see their buffalo trails and buffalo wallows. Was I always too busy to go? I don’t think so—but somehow it just didn’t happen.
As their veterinarian, my husband Bert may have seen those historic trails and buffalo wallows, but never described them to me! Now he’s gone.
But—now I have been there! And they are impressive! Honest to goodness Buffalo Trails trod centuries ago, by generations of migrating Buffalo herds. To learn a little more about how buffalo trails are made, click here.
They are only a few miles north of Hettinger, in the general area where Cedar Creek crosses under Highway 22 on its way east to the Missouri River. And there are lots of them.
Allan and Virginia Earsley, ranchers in the Cedar Creek area, offered a motorized side-by-side ride for Dr. John Joyce and me to that special hill and ravines in their pasture where original buffalo trails show up best in spring.
Or maybe in the fall. We plan to shoot some fall photos, too. And maybe I’ll take some more in early spring, when the grasses are just peeking through.
It does make an impact to actually see these trails and re-live what was going on in those days.
Older neighbors and Allan’s grandparents identified the Buffalo Trails before cattle began making their own trails. Early settlers told their families these were NOT cattle trails.
They told stories of trails made by big herds—had to be wild buffalo! Maybe in the thousands!
When it’s time to go somewhere special a matriarchal grandmother takes the lead. Like heading down to Cedar Creek to drink; she takes off and the herd follows single file. Photo courtesy of SD Tourism.
Trekking down to water in the Cedar Creek day after day. Cutting deep narrow grooves in the hills as they apparently went single file—with a matriarch cow leading, just as buffalo tend to do today when the herd is headed somewhere—such as to water.
Down the hill they went—single file--then back up onto the grassy plateau where the herd spread out to graze again.
In another season and yet another, they returned to follow the same trails—ancient trails that seemed to cut across fences the newcomers built.
I wanted to take that ride to see the trails. Could hardly wait till spring when grass began to green up and reveal these mysterious trails. Known first to original settlers who refused to plow them up—and passed their stories on to grandkids—although unfortunately they didn’t write them down.
These majestic trails are another part of our Buffalo Legacy. Yours and mine!
Apparently these were buffalo trails where buffalo went down single file to the Cedar Creek to drink and then turned around and walked back up onto grassy plateaus to the south to graze.Across the creek to the north, other trails came down to the Cedar—and returned after watering. Photos by FMB.
Young bulls follow the leader across a pasture near the Slim Buttes in single file. Some of the old single-file trails are still here, having cut deep grooves into the landscape. Photo FMB.
Buffalo Wallows
Back up on the plateau where the grazing is good the herd would have scattered to fill their bellies.
One hundred and 50 years ago after a quenching drink it may be that many individuals sought a nice comfortable wallow.
The wallowing evidence is here as well. There’s a School Section—which has never been plowed and is now divided into 4 pastures for rotational grazing of cattle—that holds many old buffalo wallows.
Tom Schoeder took Connie Messner and me on another “side by side” to see the wallows in that school section.
They tend to be almost round—perhaps 9 to 10 feet in diameter and 2 ft in depth. And there are lots of them, nearly all filled now with green grass. Perhaps made by thousands of buffalo over their many migrations.
Tom Schoeder told Connie Messner and me that his family called the depressions “knolls,” perhaps because they tend to be found on the higher ground. There were many, perhaps 50 or more. Wonder how many buffalo that represents? Photos by FMB.
Connie Messner and Tom Schoeder stand along the side of a faintly visible wallow. Photo by FM Berg.
Connie Messner, Buffalo Grande Foundation member, walks across the prairie in front a very visible wallow. Photo by FM Berg.
Buffalo Grande Foundation member, Connie Messner stands on the prairie next to an overgrown wallow with a less visible one in the foreground. Photo by FM Berg.
Landowner Tom Schoeder stands on a knot in the midst of numerous buffalo wallows. Photo by FM Berg.
Connie Messner stands to the left of a large wallow while Tom Schoeder stands to the right. Photo by FM Berg.
We estimated perhaps 50 or 60 wallows in a single pasture (90 acres). They seem to be clustered more heavily together along somewhat higher land than down on the Cedar Creek itself.
Tom said his family called the wallows “knolls,” evidently to recognize their placement on higher ground.
Jim Strand, Buffalo Herdsman, tells us that when flies are bad, or it’s hot, his buffalo will seek higher ground where they can catch a breeze.
For a wallow they like sandy soil and will throw dirt and dust up over their backs. If a wallow happens to contain rainwater, well, splashing mud around and onto their own hides makes it even better!
In her report of the Buffalo Wallows Conni Messner wrote, “Driving west on Hwy 12 and north on Hwy 22, we met Tom not far from the turn on 18th Ave. He led us to a section of land that is being used for grazing but since it is School Land it has not been used for agriculture.
“We jumped onto his 4 by 4 and drove to many sites that Tom remembered his grandfather telling were made by buffalo rutting in the dirt.
“We must have seen approximately 50 depressions. Some of these wallows were on flat land and some were up on what he called the knolls—or ridge line. Tom said the Wallows were more visible when he was a child.
“Cedar Creek was flowing and he related that the buffalo would drink here before heading south to their grazing area.
“Tom was very clear in the fact that he was not an expert on this history and this information he was sharing with us was from his childhood memories.
“He also stressed that this land is Our Land owned by the State of North Dakota and can be visited without permission.”
And we recorded what we could of the remembered words from our hardy pioneers who saw them first—and recognized the trails and wallows as ancient evidence of our legacy—where thousands of buffalo once tramped the ground and thrived.
Now our Buffalo Grande group has done it. We took photos of the buffalo trails and the wallows.
These majestic trails and wallows are just another part of our Buffalo Legacy. Yours and mine!
They fit in perfectly with the Historic Buffalo sites we celebrate in our Hettinger/Lemmon/Bison/Buffalo area.
So whether your family has been here 7,000 years or just a few—if you’ve put down roots in this community, this is your Legacy—yours and mine! It’s a Buffalo legacy of which we can all be proud.
Let’s keep their stories coming! Surely, there are more!
