In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

"Taking up some handfuls ofsoil, they said that the animals were just as numerous as the grains ofsand . " HERNAN GALLEGOS "These buffalo seemed to knock all the water out of the river when they'd plunge in headlong to swim across. " GEORGE BROWN C ODAY MOST of us liken all buffalo to the bull stamped on the back of the old buffalo nickel-see one buffalo you've seen 'em all; in the zoo, cow or bull, we can't tell which, we see only that some are bigger than others and that they all have humps and horns. But the frontiersman , who pushed through thousands of buffalo humps higher than his horse's back, could tell cows from bulls even at a distance: the bull's larger size, his bushier, longer pelage-especially his front pantaloons -his higher hump, thicker neck and heavier beard gave him away. The frontiersman could identify beaver buffalo and scabby buffalo, blue buffalo, and sometimes albino buffalo; he saw mean buffalo, scared buffalo, fat buffalo, lean buffalo; he saw hornless buffalo , and crumple-horned buffalo, and one-horned buffalo. Just when he'd found that "Bufalow are so tame they come almost in to camp,"l just when he'd come to expect all buffalo to give way to him, he'd meet up with one who, tail up and head down, charged him, demanded that he give way. A million buffalo meant a million individualities. Frontiersmen became buffalo "experts." They saw differences between the buffalo on the prairies and those in the Rocky Mountains. Those in the Rockies, shy woodland animals, seemed larger (some said smaller, they were wrong) and blacker than the plains animal; they called these "mountain bison" but called the plains variety "buffier" or "buffs." The first explorers of the far north, near Great Slave Lake, saw big and black buffalo similar to mountain bison. This northern buffalo also seemed shyer than the prairie buffalo, for he used trees and brush to screen himself from view (as did the mountain buffalo). And he was nowhere near as docile as the prairie buffalo; he was "quite as wary and difficult to hunt as the moose." 2 You didn't ride amongst herds of him, more likely as you rode you listened to the crash of him disappearing , and as to hunting him, "When they have been once fired at, a second shot can seldom be got." J All men agreed that this northern buffalo in November looked blacker than the usual raisin-brown prairie buffalo, that his horns seemed more slender, and that he stood inches higher at the hump. About 1845 this biggest of the modern buffalo came to be known as the "wood buffalo." Now, some zoologists believe that perhaps the wood buffalo had earlier drifted south as far as Nevada and New Mexic04 and became known as mountain bison there. The two are the same buffalo. East of the Mississippi old-timers claimed that buffalo in Pennsylvania had grown larger and had developed a darker pelage than the plains animal. Zoologists Nature and Numbers of the Buffalo called this supposed species Bison bison pennsylvanicus until they decided no such species had existed. Today zoologists note that the northern wood buffalo averages larger overall measurements of the skull and horn cores than does the prairie animal; they believe him, Bison bison athabascae who at one time had ranged the Arctic to the Bering Strait, and Bison bison bison, the southerner, the buffalo of the buffalo nickel, to be different subspecies, but they point out that the special differences show up mostly in the laboratory. The buffalo occasionally produced varietal markings -a star on a forehead, white spots on sides or front, or white forefeet, highly unusual markings. The buffalo occasionally produced albinos-more cream to apricot than white-the famous white buffalo. Although rare as are all albinos (Jim Bridger saw only one in a lifetime amongst the herds), the buffalo millions undoubtedly cast up substantial numbers of them. They disappeared quickly, in early times sacrificed to the sun by Indians, later traded to the whites for extra bounty. Since few zoologists traveled the buffalo ranges to record their habits, about all we know of the historic buffalo comes from the reports of mountain men, explorers , hide hunters and sportsmen. Sometimes they repeat only notions about the buffalo, as did General George Armstrong Custer when he wrote that the "course" of all buffalo trails was "almost as unvarying as...

Share