According to my “stay at home and find something to do” research efforts, the American buffalo is officially known among biologists as the species Bison bison, although I’ve not been able to discover why biologists need to say everything twice. (I had the same problem with the ’80s rock band Duran Duran, but they were not named by biologists as far as I know.)
Apparently, the big, bovine animals much prefer to be called “buffalo” instead of Bison bison… even though the biologists claim they are not allowed to be called a “buffalo” because the biologists use the name “buffalo” to indicate a couple of distant relatives: the Asian “water buffalo” and the African “Cape buffalo”. This has been confusing to the American buffalo, I’m sure, but that’s the kind of thing that can happen when you aren’t paying attention in biology class.
The American buffalo make up for their lack of formal education, however, by sporting a cool beard — something the water buffalo and Cape buffalo are unable to muster up.
To go along with his beard, the American buffalo generally cultivates a cool, easy-going attitude, but you don’t want to piss him off — considering he weighs more than 2,000 pounds, has sharp horns, and can come charging at 50 MPH.
These usually mild-mannered beasts somehow made it through the last Ice Age — no mean feat — and then grazed and wallowed their way through 10,000 years of the Holocene Interglacial Period, happily making baby buffalo along the way. (I use the term, ‘happily’ because, except for mating season, the males typically hang out in separate herds and leave the females to raise the kids. Which might indicate that formal education isn’t such a necessity, after all.)
The indigenous tribes of North America sometimes referred to the buffalo as “The First People”, and there was a culture of mutual respect between the two species — Bison bison and Homo homo sapiens — both being stuck with repetitious names. At the time the first Europeans arrived on the scene, it’s estimated that North American was home to maybe 60 million buffalo — all wearing beards, and roaming from Northern Canada to Central Mexico.
But 10,000 years of prosperity were no match for the new immigrants from Europe, who arrived in the New World with guns and Second Amendment rights. By 1889, successful extermination campaigns by the US government — aimed at eliminating the traditional food sources of indigenous tribes, or perhaps due simply to a prejudice against beards — had reduced the number of buffalo down to an estimated 1,500, the vast majority of them living sheltered but rather unexciting lives in zoos. A census in 1908 counted 475 wild buffalo still roaming free in North America, mostly in Canada.
Around that time, a group of pioneering conservationists including William T. Hornaday and Theodore Roosevelt decided to save the buffalo from extinction — having utterly dropped the ball with the dodo bird and carrier pigeon — and the American Bison Society (ABS) was founded in 1905 with a daunting task ahead of them.
The buffalo themselves were pretty keen on the idea, too, never having fully understood the value of Second Amendment rights. (Note to young readers: pay attention in your American Government class.)
The President of the ABS was initially pessimistic about their prospects, while also hinting at some sentimental reasons behind the undertaking. “When we began conserving these animals,” he explained in an interview in 1930, “everyone believed they would become extinct within a few years. It was simply a gesture on our part to keep alive, for as long as possible, a memory of the Old West.”
But the ABS, with financial assistance from the federal government, foundations, and private corporations, succeeded beyond all expectations, thanks at least in part to a concomitant effort by male and female buffalo. In 1923, the ABS published a press release noting that nearly 12,000 buffalo were now roaming North America. The Society felt so confident about the buffalo’s future that they disbanded in 1935. We don’t know if the buffalo themselves were feeling quite as confident because they weren’t prone to form societies and publish press releases.
In fact, the buffalo may have felt a subtle sense of betrayal, because by 1935, a budding industry had sprung up in the US, and thousands of buffalo were being slaughtered for their meat and hides.
It must be tough, to be saved from extinction, only to wind up on someone’s barbecue grill. You might find yourself asking, with complete justification, “What is this — some kind of practical joke?”
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.