Hey, what’s your favorite ungulate? Is it some species of deer or cow, a camel or a horse or sheep or hippo? A gazelle, ox, giraffe, or moose perhaps? What about a whale or dolphin? Yes, my ungulate-loving friend, those awesome swimmers of the deep are also classified as ungulates, and if that shatters your belief in science or at least taxonomy, sorry about that. Were there any ungulates in Dorothy’s Kansas, or in Oz? Think about it, though not for too long as you’ve better things to do.
So what about buffalo? Specifically the North American buffalo, which of course is not a “true” buffalo at all but a bison species, at least to the taxonomists who seem to be creating all sorts of problems here, so for now let us dismiss those guys and move on. In our hearts those big shaggy beasts of the prairies are now and shall always be the buffalo, no ifs ands or buts about it. Imagine singing Home on the Range with the opening line “Oh give me a home, where the bison do roam” or something like that. Does it not lose all its poetry?
So what is your experience with this iconic ungulate species? If you’re old enough, you might have memories of nickels passing through your sticky fingers as you purchased candy long long ago that had a buffalo on one side and the image of a native American on the other. It should be noted that from the beginning, folks called it the “buffalo nickel” except for taxonomists and their children, who probably yielded after too many taunts or even playground bullying by their peers when they insisted that the correct name was “bison.” In these matters correctness is a non-starter.
For the record, it should also be known that we referred to the First Americans as “Indians” in those days, whereas today things have reached a point where even the Cleveland baseball franchise has seen the light, a big deal if there ever was one. Go Guardians!
Few if any baby-boomer children of the 1950s had any idea that the coin had already long ceased production back in 1938 after a 25 year run, but most of us might recall how smooth and worn they often were. Designed by the sculptor James Earle Fraser, the native figure was, according to the artist, at least partially based on the Lakota chief, Iron Tail, as well as a chief of the Cheyenne tribe, Two Moons, who’d participated in the defeat of Custer at the Little Big Horn. Whether Fraser was making some subtle statement there is lost to history. When it comes to that bison, Fraser told the story about how the animal depicted was “the contrariest animal at the Bronx Zoo, who refused point blank to permit me to get side views of him, and stubbornly showed his front face most of the time.” Evidently the sculptor and the ungulate, whose name was supposedly “Bronx,” worked things out, more or less.
From the standpoint of history, that nickel (which was mostly made of copper) speaks volumes. Was there ever a more symbiotic relationship between Homo sapiens and an untamed wild species in all of history than what was represented by the images struck onto that coin? Is it too much of a poetic stretch to suggest that the erosion of those images on that five-cent-piece reflected the erasure that occurred in the real world throughout the 19th century?
Most North Americans, if not much of the world, are well aware of the near-genocidal program inflicted on both the buffalo and native tribes, not just on the prairies and great plains, but everywhere on the continent. Many of us learned some version of the story in a history class somewhere, or in books or at the movies. Did any of that history “come alive” for you? Your answer can be yes or no or even maybe, especially when it comes to the tale that concerns the Europeans and their progeny taking on the original peoples of the continent-across-the-sea. Contrary to popular beliefs that held sway for far too long, cowboys and Indians it was not. The real story in particular is one that is long and complicated and the version most of us have heard is all too often suspect and incomplete, as is all history told by the winners. Recent years have seen some worthy attempts at long-needed corrections, but it’s a heavy lift.
The Homo sapiens vs Bison bison side of the story – not the part involving the symbiotic one shown on the coin that had prevailed for centuries, but the chapter after that where a different kind of human took on the role – is one that more readily lends itself to an instantly powerful narrative. This is because that bit of history was of relatively short duration and was incredibly brutal as well, as it unfolded on the vast American plains. What adds to this is that it happened at a time in history when it could be told with dramatic photographic evidence. Ken Burns has used all this to great effect in his recent film on the topic, and you are highly advised to watch it. If it fails to make history come alive for you and bring a tear to your eye, you should consider whether you might be missing a heart, like the Tin Man in that other story.
In the film’s second part, Mr. Burns mercifully provides an upbeat followup that tells about the just-in-time efforts to avoid B.bison’s extinction, unlike the fate of the similarly slaughtered passenger pigeon, a story that the film does not mention. On our one-time visit to the National Mall in D.C., we happened upon Martha, the last surviving E.migratorius, now stuffed and sitting in a glass case in the basement of the natural history museum. It was a touching and sobering moment, a sad bit of history coming alive even though Martha and her entire species had long left the planet, courtesy of our species’ pathetic and homicidal notion of what constitutes “sport.”
But hey! Such did not turn out to be the case with the American buffalo (not to be confused with American Buffalo, a play by David Mamet that is another downbeat American story but one where nary a bison appears on stage). The species has seen a slow but gradual upswing in numbers for over a century now, which nowadays appropriately includes the involvement of native North American tribes. If you go to the trouble, you can encounter the real deal up close and personal, in all its shaggy and mysterious magnificence, at which moment history just might come alive for you, if you give it a chance. Would you believe this has happened to us three different times in three very disparate places? Does this not make us buffalo buffs, so to speak, and will you please excuse how silly that sounds?
The pictorial narrative tells all, or at least most, of what matters. Our first encounter was the least likely of all, by far, on a Sunday ride along the north side of the Merrimack River about 30 miles away in Haverhill MA. It’s mostly rolling exurban countryside, fancy homes with big yards that front the river down the hill. Imagine turning a corner on a long downhill stretch to face a smallish livestock operation, with the animals in question unmistakably different from the usual herd of cattle one might expect. We stopped, dumbfounded or whatever, though probably not as astonished as those first Europeans who encountered what they must’ve thought were the weirdest cows they’d ever seen, back when they were first exploring this continent. One can only wonder if Coronado was one of these, on his trek into Kansas.
Of course these animals were penned, and it is very likely they were some amalgam of B.bison genes mixed with Hereford or whatever, as the domestic buffalo/beefalo market is like that. Lacking our portable DNA test-kit did not help matters. The Ken Burns film talks explicitly about how the wild buffalo herds are carefully screened to be purebred, and the movement to put such animals into new environments, many of these in what has long been known as “cattle country,” faces its share of challenges. One wonders about the circumstances under which ungulates of two different species meeting out on the range decide to combine some DNA together. Does one species hold a certain “sex appeal” for the other, that sparks arousal in a way that those of their own species cannot? The mysteries of the natural world are manifold and mysterious, indeed.
Our next encounter was totally intentional and expected, though it is testimony to the power of “buffalo mystique” that when it happened the moment was as special as any. Part of this was that we knew it was a wild herd in a natural habitat, the only one that has existed as a free ranging population, in the same place, since prehistoric times, or such is the claim, and it is one helluva claim, is it not? The place, of course, was Yellowstone National Park, a bucket list destination packed with more iconic features than you can imagine. The promise of a close encounter with B.bison was but one of the many reasons to go, right up there with the chance to witness Old Faithful spurting (or however one describes what geysers do) and maybe just maybe catching a glimpse of the Junction Butte or the Eight Mile Pack in the moonlight, not too close but just close enough. We’re talking wolves, here, in case you didn’t know.
We encountered those buffalo, and it certainly was up-close-and-personal, there in the Lamar Valley, because they were all over the road, which is apparently a common circumstance. History came alive in that moment, as except for that road (and the hordes of people gawking and snapping photos furiously, this writer included), this could have been a scene from a thousand years ago. What made it kind of spiritual was the realization that this herd had once been reduced to about two dozen members, by poachers in the national park who’d been furiously firing bullets for far too long. The herd today numbers about 4800, in case you were wondering. Over a week we saw small numbers throughout the park, and it can be said there were lots of good looks, and yes we saw wolves in the moonlight and brown bears at a great distance and yes it was the perfect Yellowstone visit. This also included annoyance at the size of the crowds. Perfect in every way.
History comes alive in similar ways when the subject of interest is the same, but of course never in exactly the same way. Mark Twain might have said it’s more like variations on a theme, if he’d been given the chance, which he wasn’t. Our buffalo encounters took place in several locations in Kansas, but what mattered is that this time it was in the vastness of the great plains, or at least the tall grass prairie piece of it that remains. This time, one could imagine how that vastness could contain the tens of millions of animals said to roam there, a thought that never occurred in the relatively intimate confines of the Lamar Valley in Wyoming.
The two venues we visited in Kansas were the Maxwell Refuge and the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve. The first is run by the state of Kansas, while the second is run by the National Park Service. It should be noted that whereas Yellowstone was established as the first national park in 1872, in a law signed by President Ulysses Grant, the Tall Grass Preserve wasn’t deemed worthy of protection until 1996. Could this have something to do with the fact that Yellowstone, full of stunning visual wonders, some of them one-of-a-kind – almost Oz-like, come to think of it – was a pretty easy sell to Congress, whereas the TGPP had all along been basically an area of grassland in Kansas? Hardly sexy at all, to put it bluntly.
Just as the buffalo was saved when it was about to disappear forever, the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve was deemed worthy when knowing environmentalists and like-spirited people, many of them Kansans, realized only a tiny remnant of the tall grass prairie that had once dominated the area still remained. It is a sign of the times that government saw the light, as well, and purchased the one-time Jones ranch of 1878 that more recently had become the Z Bar, which included 11000 acres of intact tall grass prairie, which you see in the pictures. Not enormously vast, but vast enough to convince the eye that the prairie goes on forever, if only in the moment, a moment when history just might come alive for those who use their imagination.
And it was a special treat to be informed that it was Ryan, our “rookie” guide’s father, the rancher up near Manhattan, who’d been one of the folks instrumental in making the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve happen. Love for one’s home place seems to have been one of the factors here, and one wonders if it was the same story with Yellowstone, which at its inception was the home of native tribes and those buffalo and all the other species inhabiting that Wyoming wilderness, and nobody else. That story must’ve been a whole lot different, but then it was a long time ago.
