Heads, Hides and Horns: The Complete Buffalo Book

Introduction

INTRODUCTION O RIGINALLY I meant this book to present only the story of the men who saved the buffalo, but as my research grew, so did the scope of the book. Its direction changed. I began writing about the relationship between buffalo and man on the North American continent, for this, it seemed to me, was the story that hadn't yet been completely told. The grass-eating North American buffalo both led man to the North American continent, and then, by feeding him, clothing him, and housing him, made it possible for him to live there. The appearance of grass on the recently bared Bering Isthmus had attracted grasseaters, the musk-ox, the tapir, the giant ground sloth-and the buffalo-to the isthmus and to the grassy continent beyond. Man followed where the grasseaters went, especially such sizeable and easily hunted grasseaters: each kill provided food for many days. Although some people on the new continent raised crops and others fished or hunted deer and smaller animals, many of the people who arrived here hunted amongst the plenty of the buffalo herds. The buffalo population increased to millions, filling the Great Plains, spilling over into eastern forests and northern Mexican desert; the Great Plains tribes who depended on these buffalo lived surrounded by the xv beasts. Over thousands of years a buffalo culture developed among these tribes. They understood the buffalo 's ways and respected them; they emulated his traits; they worshipped him (and the sun) as givers of life. Much that they did each day was related to their knowledge of and reverence for the buffalo. When European white man arrived on the continent , the buffalo in turn affected his imagination: he imagined riches from the buffalo leather sold in Europe , he imagined owning herds of buffalo. He accomplished neither, but he lived on buffalo meat as he explored the continent. Later, as he began to farm, he raised cash grain crops but ate buffalo meat rather than raising cattle. And he tried to cross this native bovine with the bovines he had imported. But when buffalo hooves trampled crops, when his eternal rubbing brought down newly-set telegraph poles, when his herds stopped railway trains, these men began to think of him as pest rather than lifegiver . And when the plains Indians, fighting against the reservation system, fed upon the buffalo as they fought off federal troops, the United States government came to see the beast as a pest also. It saw to it that the herds were all but wiped out. Free Indians became reservation Indians. Then, the few hundreds of buffalo remaining again captured the acquisitive imagination of the white Heads. Hides & Horns man. Showmen exhibited buffalo. schemers captured calves and started commercial herds, brokers sold commercial buffalo to butcher shops for Christmasand to Indian tribes that could raise the money to buy buffalo to renew buffalo ritual in their lives. Also, the dwindling numbers of buffalo captured a different aspect of man's imagination-a totally new aspect in the relationship between man and animalan idea of saving the buffalo species from extinction. This idea so captured the imagination of Americans that, even today, eighty years later, the question I'm most often asked is, "Do you think the buffalo is really safe from extinction?" So that's what this book tells of: man and buffalo in North America. My years with the buffalo have changed the way I look at my home country. As I ride through it I look at hillsides, and, where brush on a sunny slope grows in bunches, I see old buffalo wallows. My eyes follow cattle trails knowing that many of them are trails first scuffed out by buffalo. A gully with raw cutbanks I suspect began as a steep buffalo trail. The signs tell me I'm in buffalo country, but I see no buffalo. Larry Barsness Missoula, Montana Heads, Hides & Horns ...