Buffalo have inhabited North America for 100,000 years or more. Pre-historic ancestors were much larger than their present day
cousins. At the Hawkeye Buffalo Ranch store we have on display, a buffalo skull estimated to be 25,000 years old.
This skull is three times the size of present day buffalo.Buffalo or Bison? Which is correct? Actually, they are the same. Bison is the scientific name and buffalo is the common name. Spanish explorers of the early 1500's were the first white persons to see these shaggy creatures, which they thought were wild cows. But, it was the early French that named them "le boeuf". English speaking frontiersmen twisted and shortened the name to "buffalo".
Before colonization, buffalo roamed the entire United States. Sadly, they were no competition for advancing "civilization" and by the early 1800's the last of the buffalo East of the Mississippi had been killed.
Still, an estimated 16,000,000 covered the Western plains from Texas to Canada. Migrating herds were wider then you could see
and extended in length for 100 miles. They were the staples for the Native American Indians who utilized every part of the hunted
buffalo.
Advancing frontiersmen lived off buffalo, but didn't even put a dent in their numbers. It was a lack of transportation that held
off the inevitable slaughter. The American attitude of "manifest destiny" would prevail. If it is there, kill it and plow the land and plant it.
It mattered not that the Native Americans had been "caretakers" of the land and herds for generations.
The end of the Civil War and completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 would signal the beginning of the end. Railroads brought people
and transportation and the "buffalo hunters".
The plains literally crawled wit buffalo hunters. A typical "team" would consist of two hunters, four skinners and three wagons with drivers to haul hides to the market.
For protection against the Indian raids, the teams stayed fairly close together.
A good hunter could kill 75-100 buffalo a day. A good skinner could skin 60 animals a day/ They were skinned where they fell and once skinned the hide was stretched and staked to dry.
If hides brought $2 the hunter was paid 20 cents and the skinner 15 cents. Once skinned the hunters, generally, took only the tongue and hump meat plus the tallow to lubricate their shells.
Most of the slaughter took place in 1870-1875. Some hunters took from 3000-5000 animals during a summer season. In a six-year period, one hunter killed 20,500 buffalo. By 1875 the herd had been
reduced to a million head. The transcontinental railroad had split the herd and migration. The south herd was the largest and by 1880 it had been decimated. The hunters moved North and for $56 they could
purchase the newly invented Sharps breech-loading rifle.
The killing would soon be over.
A survey party sent out in 1900 found less than 200 animals. A small herd remained in the Yellowstone area and a few more were preserved on ranches. The buffalo war was over and the American Indian had been starved on to
the poorest, least productive land in the country. It was called a "reservation."
Still, the Spirit of the Buffalo remains alive. Today, buffalo, the icons of American history, are alive and well. With about 350,000 buffalo in North America the threat of extinction is gone.
We invite you to visit the Hawkeye Buffalo Ranch. Come and share the Spirit that still lives on.