The American Buffalo

For people who haven't given much thought to how Americans and our government tried to destroy the Indigenous people of this land, Ken Burns' new documentary The American Buffalo is a good introduction.

Starting with a "charismatic animal" is generally a good way to win hearts and minds, and from there the first half (two hours) does an excellent job of showing how the tribes and the animals were in balance before America's westward expansion, exploitation, and sheer racism drove the buffalo almost to extinction.

From the first part of the show, I learned that an adult Buffalo can run 35 mph, weighs 1,800–2,000+ pounds, and jumps 6' high and 7' horizontally. They're up to 6' tall at the shoulders and 10' long (not counting the tail). I've seen a few buffalo in person (from a safe distance) so I had a sense of their size, but I had no idea of their speed or jumping ability.

What I also knew little about were the armies of "market hunters" who killed huge numbers of buffalo for profit — not just to feed workers building the railroads, which was what I had thought before. And I knew even less about how it was that buffalo have come to still exist today, after they were almost all killed for fun and profit.

An 1889 map made by William Hornaday, Smithsonian zoologist and taxidermist, showed the decreasing population of buffalo over time. At the time of the map, he noted just 550 left, of which only 85 were living free. (Screen capture from The American Buffalo—click to enlarge and read the years and population numbers.) Note that the buffalo once extended beyond the Appalachians and the Rockies, as well as into what is now Canada and Mexico. Hornaday was wrong about several important things, but was correct in realizing that wild creatures and commodification do not mix. They must be protected from the market or they will be wiped out.

Rosalyn Lapier, a University of Illinois ethnobotanist and one of the rotating group of Indigenous scholars quoted on camera, says at one point that we have to ask ourselves: "Why Americans are so destructive? I think it's an important question to ask. Why is that part of our story. Why is that part of our history?"

Later, Burns includes a 19th century quote about westward expansion and development. The writer used the phrase "redeeming the wilderness." I wonder what sense of the word "redeeming" that person meant? Was it religious redeeming, to save the soul of the wilderness from sinfulness? Or monetary redeeming, like a coupon, or redeeming from kidnapping? It's certainly convenient that the word can mean both, since it could be either one in this case, because forced religious conversions were combined with land theft for monetary gain.

I wrote back in August about the Indian-head nickel, but I failed to mention that it's also called the buffalo-head nickel. The coin is mentioned in the Burns documentary because the buffalo used as a model was from a zoo in New York City, and not long after was cut up at a butcher shop for meat. Hmm.

This time, in thinking about the coin, I was struck by the realization that it was intended at the time (1913) as a two-sided romantic paean to a lost past. But here we are today with more buffalo than any time since the 1880s — though many more of them need to be in free-roaming herds — and with Indigenous tribes and nations finally gaining religious freedom, more control of their lands, and recognition that they are still here.

The follow-up one-hour panel conversation with Judy Woodruff ("American Buffalo: A Story of Resilience," linked on page 2 of the PBS documentary site) includes helpful information on the Intertribal Buffalo Council, and gives a modern Indigenous perspective on challenging the land-use paradigm of the past 150 years. It's one of reciprocity and restoration: being a part of, rather than above.

Which way of doing things fits better with our future of climate change? Who is better suited to manage the land and the beings who live on it?