Producer
SARAH BIRNBAUM

Associate Producer
RONNIE GODEANU

Acting Design Director
SHANNON PALMER

Writer
DAVID MALAKOFF

Designers
SABINA DALEY
SHANNON PALMER

Graphic Art
LENNY DROZNER

Acting Technical Director
G. FRANCISCO PERIN

Scientific Consultant
GIANNA SCARALIA

wNetStation is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Ann Willmott Andersson, Director of Interactive & Broadband.

Television Credits

A Co-Production of Partridge Films and Thirteen/WNET New York.

© 1998 Thirteen/WNET New York

All Rights Reserved

Funder Credits

Funding for the TV series NATURE is made possible in part by Park Foundation. Major corporate support is provided by Canon U.S.A., Inc., Ford Motor Company, and TIAA-CREF. Additional support is provided by the nation’s public television stations.

To order a copy of AMERICAN BUFFALO: SPIRIT OF A NATION, please visit the NATURE Shop.
Online content for AMERICAN BUFFALO: SPIRIT OF A NATION was originally posted November 1998.

Many Native American tribes revere the bison. South Dakota’s rugged Black Hill country is frigid and raw in winter. But in 1991, the February chill didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of delegates from 19 tribes that gathered there to give the American bison a new lease on life. In forming the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative (ITBC), the delegates hoped to restore the bison to millions of acres of tribal lands — and to a central place in tribal life. “We recognize the bison as a symbol of strength and unity,” says Fred DuBray, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux and former president of the ITBC who appears in American Buffalo. The South Dakota-based group believes that “reintroduction of the buffalo to tribal lands will help heal the spirit of both the Indian people and the buffalo . . . To reestablish healthy buffalo populations on tribal lands is to reestablish hope for Indian people.” So far, more than 40 tribes have joined the effort, which has helped create a collective herd of almost 10,000 animals.

Many Native American tribes revere the bison.

In bringing back the buffalo, the ITBC is attempting to restore a key part of Native American culture. Once, dozens of prairie tribes depended on the bison for food, and their lives revolved around the annual buffalo hunt, which was celebrated in song and ritual like those seen on American Buffalo. The “buffalo people,” as some tribes called the animals, were revered for their power and the good fortune they brought the tribe. “I really believe, like the old people do, that these [animals] have a spirit,” says Gerard Baker, a Plains Indian who appears in SACRED BUFFALO PEOPLE, a documentary film made by the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium in 1992. “When you shoot them, you can almost feel that spirit around you for a while.”

One place that spirit is now being felt again is the Fort Belknap Reservation, of the Assiniboine and Grow Ventre tribes in northern Montana. There, modern buffalo hunters use helicopters to help manage a herd of 250 bison — part of a larger effort to restore many native animals to the land. On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, however, Lakota herdsmen still go out on horseback to round up the herd, which has become an important source of meat. The annual event is followed by a slaughtering ceremony that attracts widespread attention. Indeed, selling bison meat has become a $650 million industry — one that many Native Americans are eager to join. Bringing back buffalo herds, they say, will not only bring in some sorely-needed cash, it will also help realize an old tribal vow. “I love the land and the buffalo,” a Kiowa elder once said, “and I will not part with it. I want you to understand well what I say.” Today, a new generation of Native Americans seeking to restore buffalo to their lands say they understand all too well.

We recommend these Web sites for those interested in the subjects shown on the program. All links are valid as of March 22, 2001.

Center for Bison Studies
http://www.montana.edu/~wwwcbs/index.html
Research reports from Montana State University, Bozeman.

Buffalo Field Campaign
http://www.wildrockies.org/buffalo
Activist organization dedicated to preventing the indiscriminate slaughter of bison in the Yellowstone region.

Bisoncentral.com
http://www.bisoncentral.com/
The National Bison Association promotes the preservation, production, and marketing of bison.

Great Plains Buffalo Association
http://www.gpbuffalo.org
Organization devoted to preserving the Plains buffalo and promoting natural and sustainable management practices.

Bison — Yellowstone
http://www.nps.gov/yell/nature/animals/bison/bison.html
Photos and facts from the National Park Service.

Prairies Forever
http://www.prairies.org
A non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the ecological and cultural significance of the American prairie.

Friends of the Prairie Learning Center
http://www.tallgrass.org/buffalo.html
Buffalo facts and pictures from the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa.

Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative
http://www.intertribalbison.org/
A Native American group dedicated to restoring bison to tribal lands.

Yellowstone National Park
http://www.nps.gov/yell/
Learn about the park and its bison.

Print Resources

Callenbach, Ernest. BRING BACK THE BUFFALO!: A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE FOR AMERICA’S GREAT PLAINS. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996.

Foster, John. BUFFALO. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press, 1992.

Geist, Valerius. BUFFALO NATION: HISTORY AND LEGEND OF THE NORTH AMERICAN BISON. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1996.

Haines, Francis. THE BUFFALO: THE STORY OF AMERICAN BISON AND THEIR HUNTERS FROM PREHISTORIC TIMES TO THE PRESENT. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Matthews, Anne. WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM. New York: Grove Press, 1993.

Robinson, Charles M. THE BUFFALO HUNTERS. Austin, TX: State House Press, 1995.

Sample, Michael. BISON: SYMBOL OF THE AMERICAN WEST. Helena, MT: Sample Falcon Press, 1987.

Bison found a haven within Yellowstone. In 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant created the world’s first national park in the Yellowstone Valley of Montana, his goal was to protect some of the nation’s most spectacular scenery and create a safe haven for wildlife. His foresight would soon be rewarded, for hiding within Yellowstone’s spectacular mountains was the last wild bison herd left on Earth. By the 1890s, however, the herd was threatened with extinction from poachers. In 1894, after park rangers could find only 20 remaining bison, Congress quickly passed a law that called for fining and imprisoning poachers. But the herd remained small. In 1902, there were still just 23 animals. That finding worried scientists concerned about the fate of the buffalo. Several prominent researchers, including William Hornaday of the New York Zoological Park (now the Bronx Zoo), began a campaign to rebuild wild herds. In 1902, bison from two ranched herds were released into Yellowstone to bolster the population. Then, in 1905, Hornaday sent a dozen bison from his zoo to a new, 8,000-acre reserve in Kansas established to restore a buffalo herd. In 1906, with help from President Theodore Roosevelt, Hornaday and others founded the American Buffalo Society, which spearheaded efforts to recreate more wild herds.

Bison found a haven within Yellowstone.

Today, the results of Hornaday’s labors can be seen in Yellowstone, which is now home to more than 2,000 free-roaming bison. Other smaller herds can be found on ranches around the nation and in Canada. Together, they total more than 200,000 animals. Despite its inspiring comeback, however, the Yellowstone herd has become enmeshed in several heated debates over how the park’s wildlife should be managed. One involves efforts to reintroduce wolves — one of the bison’s few natural predators — back into the park. Though more than a dozen of the efficient hunters were successfully released into the park several years ago, adjoining farmers have successfully sued to force the National Park Service to remove the wolves, claiming that they threaten livestock. For the moment, however, the wolves remain, awaiting the results of an appeal.

The other controversy involves the bison more directly. It has its roots in a 1917 discovery that some of the wild bison carry Brucellosis, a bacterial disease that causes miscarriages in cattle. Though scientists have never documented a case in which the bison have transmitted Brucellosis to cattle on ranches adjoining the park, ranchers are allowed to kill any bison that leave the park each winter in search of food. In the winter of 1996, the practice became the subject of international protests when stockmen killed more than 1,000 bison — over a quarter of the total herd at that time. Environmentalists and Native American tribes oppose the killing, saying alternatives exist. One, for example, would be to move bison that have left the park to lands owned by native tribes interested in rebuilding their own herds. So far, however, Montana and federal government officials have remained firm in their belief that the modern buffalo hunt is the best way to reduce the disease threat.

Buffalo were the lords of the prairie. To European settlers traveling across America’s Great Plains in the early 1800s, the prairie wind was a constant companion: a gentle whisper echoing across the vast sea of grass that carpeted the center of the North American continent. Sometimes, however, the rumbling of thunder could be heard in the distance, though no storm clouds could be seen. Then the ground would begin to tremble, and suddenly the astonished newcomers would be surrounded by a thundering herd of hulking animals that stretched further than the eye could see. The majestic welcoming committee made it clear that the settlers had, at last, arrived in the buffalo nation — a land where tens of million of American Bison held sway.

The NATURE program American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation tells the sad story of how the buffalo nation was destroyed nearly a century ago by greed and uncontrolled hunting — and how a few visionaries are working today to rebuild the once-great bison herds. It offers a remarkable portrait of America’s last significant wild bison herd, made up of a few thousand animals living within Montana’s Yellowstone National Park. And it highlights the efforts of Native American leaders dedicated to bringing back the animal that once gave life to their tribes. “Buffalo have to be there for our culture to exist,” says Fred DuBray, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe who appears in American Buffalo. “As we bring our herds back to health, we will also bring our people back to health.”

Like people, the buffalo — known to scientists as Bison bison — came to North America long ago from Asia, crossing a land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska. The early bison were enormous lumbering animals, weighing up to 5,000 pounds and sporting horns that spanned more than six feet across.

Bison can weigh up to a ton.

Bison can weigh up to a ton. Over time, however, the North American stock evolved into trimmer beasts. Still, modern bison can weigh up to 2,000 pounds; they can be more than a dozen feet long and stand up to six feet tall at their massive shoulder hump, which serves as a storehouse for energy-rich fat.

By the time America’s earliest peoples had established villages about 20,000 years ago, the bison dominated the rolling grasslands and forested hillsides that stretched west from the Mississippi River west to the Rocky Mountains. Researchers estimate that prairie bison alone numbered between 30 million and 200 million, while a woodland variant existed in smaller numbers. Though killing such large, fast animals was a formidable task — bison can run for long periods at up to 35 miles per hour — ancient tribes soon perfected several effective techniques. Some would surround small herds with a human chain, giving archers a better shot at the tightly packed animals. Others learned to stampede bison over cliffs. Such “buffalo jumps” provided tribes with critical supplies of nutritious meat and warm hides that allowed them to survive the region’s harsh winters. But flesh and skin weren’t the only prizes: tribes learned to use virtually every part of the animal, from horns to tail hairs.

“The Indian was frugal in the midst of plenty,” says Luther Standing Bear, a member of the Lakota tribe. “When the buffalo roamed the plains in multitudes, he slaughtered only what he could eat and these he used to the hair and bones.” Indeed, for thousands of years the huge bison herds were able to accommodate the loss of the relatively few animals taken by Native Americans. In the 1500s, however, things began to change. First, Spanish explorers introduced horses to the region. By the 1800s, Native Americans had learned to use the speedy steeds to chase bison, dramatically expanding their hunting range and effectiveness. Next, guns made their way into the hands of buffalo hunters, making them increasingly deadly hunters. But it was that arrival of vast waves of white settlers in the 1800s — and their conflict with the Native American residents of the prairies — that spelled the end for the buffalo. Among the earliest waves of settlers were trappers and traders, people who made their living selling meat and hides. By the 1870s, they were shipping hundreds of thousands of buffalo hides eastward each year: more than 1.5 million were packed aboard trains and wagons in the winter of 1872-73 alone.

The commercial killers, however, weren’t the only ones shooting bison. Train companies offered tourists the chance to shoot buffalo from the windows of their coaches, pausing only when they ran out of ammunition or the gun’s barrel became too hot. There were even buffalo killing contests. In one, a Kansan set a record by killing 120 bison in just 40 minutes. “Buffalo” Bill Cody, hired to slaughter the animals, killed more than 4,000 buffalo in just two years.

Some U.S. government officials even promoted the destruction of the bison herds as a way to defeat their Native American enemies, who were resisting the takeover of their lands by white settlers. One Congressman, James Throckmorton of Texas, believed that “it would be a great step forward in the civilization of the Indians and the preservation of peace on the border if there was not a buffalo in existence.” Soon, military commanders were ordering their troops to kill buffalo — not for food, but to deny Native Americans their own source of food. One general believed that buffalo hunters “did more to defeat the Indian nations in a few years than soldiers did in 50.” By 1880, the slaughter was almost over. Where millions of buffalo once roamed, only a few thousand animals remained. Soon, their numbers dwindled, with the largest wild herd — just a few hundred animals — sheltered in the isolated valleys of the newly created Yellowstone National Park. As American Buffalo shows, it is from this tattered remnant that people are today trying to rebuild the once mighty buffalo nation.

To order a copy of American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation, please visit the NATURE Shop.
Online content for American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation was originally posted November 1998.