Not nearly as bad, but amusing, we also missed the spectacle of buffaloes having sex. According to an article I had read at the San Francisco Library, when a bull ejaculates, his abdominal muscles flex so violently that his back hooves lift completely off the ground, causing his whole body to come to rest on the haunches of the receptive female. “If you’re not here when this happens,” Vernell had said, “I’ll take a photo and send it to you for your scrapbook.”
When I told my California friends I was now in the buffalo-raising business, that I had visions of repopulating the Great American Prairie with buffalo, they looked at me like they had known all along that I lived in my very own, uniquely distorted reality. Undaunted, I calmly explained to them that there were once fifty million to a hundred million buffalo in this country and that buffalo were the most numerous large mammals to ever exist on the face of the earth; the only phenomenon in today’s world that comes close to the sight of the thundering herds of bison that once blackened the plains is the Masai Mara wildebeest migration. Traveling in huge herds, buffalo dominated much of North America from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, from Mexico to Saskatchewan. If my friends were still listening or at least pretending to listen, I would tell them about a letter that a soldier named George Anderson sent to his sweetheart in 1871 describing a buffalo herd he saw in Kansas. “I am safe in calling this a single herd,” Anderson wrote, “but it is impossible to approximate the millions that composed it. It took me six days on horseback to ride through it.” It’s hard for us to imagine now, but buffalo were once in such abundance that they could literally drink a river dry.
Plains Indians considered the buffalo a gift from the Great Spirit. They dreamed of buffalo, prayed to them, created myths about them, saw much of their world in buffalo terms. Using the buffalo hide as a measurement, they described trees as one-robe, two-robe, or three-robe—however many would stretch about a trunk; likewise they measured tepees in terms of how many robes sewed together created each one. Most whites, however, saw buffalo as pests who fouled the water, knocked down telegraph poles, blocked wagon trails, and held up the trains. To them, the very word “buffalo” was derogatory. If you were tricked or cheated, you were “buffaloed.”
When I asked Vernell why he agreed to join me in this risky venture, he replied, “Buffalo were the basis of our life. We ate all the meat, the humps, tongue, heart, marrow. Some even ate the testicles and fetuses. We used the hides for making moccasins, tepee covers, robes, and leggings. We used buffalo hair for ropes, sinew for bowstrings, horns for spoons and cups, hoofs for rattles, teeth for ornaments, the bladder for a container. We even used the dung for fuel; with buffalo dung you could keep a fire going for days.”
He paused for a moment, and then added, “The U.S. Army defeated us by killing off the buffalo.”
How sadly true, I thought. The army promoted buffalo hunting for stated good reasons: to provide jobs for out-of-work Civil War veterans, to supply meat to feed railroad workers, to make it easier for ranchers to raise cattle, etc. But the one true real reason was to eliminate buffalo as a food source for the so-called hostile tribes who refused to give up their nomadic freedom for the idle life on a reservation. Without buffalo, they could surrender or starve. “Buffalo hunters are doing their patriotic duty,” General Philip Sheridan, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, said, “by depleting the Indians’ shaggy commissary.”
Armed with surplus Springfield rifles, thousands of buffalo hunters roamed the plains in search of the dwindling herds. From a distance of a few hundred yards, they could kill up to 250 in a single day. Millions of buffalo robes were shipped back East to companies like John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company to be used for coats and lap robes that were tucked around the legs of those riding in sleighs and carriages. A new trading center for hides sprang up in Leavenworth, Kansas, where tanneries found more uses for the material, including drive belts for industrial machines. Buffalo tongue became a delicacy in fine restaurants throughout the country, but the rest of the carcass was left to rot until a new market developed for buffalo bones. The extreme heat and cold, wind and sun of the plains caused the remaining buffalo flesh to dry up quickly. It disintegrated into dust, leaving the bones of entire skeletons as clean and bare as if some powerful chemical agents had processed them.
Once it was discovered that these bones could be converted into carbon for use in refining cane sugar, the gathering and shipping of buffalo bones became a new industry. In 1873, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway shipped 2,743,000 pounds, and in 1874 it handled 6,914,950 pounds. The Northern Pacific Railway shipped even larger quantities. As late as 1886, overland travelers saw immense heaps of buffalo bones lying alongside the tracks waiting for shipment at stations throughout South and North Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. This trade continued until the bones were gleaned so far back from the tracks that it was no longer profitable to seek them.
Obsessed with reaching a “final solution” for the buffalo, the army routinely outfitted civilian hunting expeditions to destroy as many as possible. In 1872, General Sheridan organized a grand buffalo hunt for the Russian czar’s son Grand Duke Alexis, who was visiting America to celebrate his twenty-second birthday. Sheridan met Alexis in Omaha with two companies of infantry; two more companies of cavalry; a regimental band; three wagons of provisions including caviar, Champagne, and royal spirits; and a complement of teamsters, night herders, couriers, cooks, and civilian merchants called sutlers. There was even a trailing group of friendly Indians led by Chief Spotted Tail to provide entertainment in the form of a mock Indian battle and an evening “war dance.” Buffalo Bill Cody was hired to be the guide, and among the other soldiers was Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Loaded onto a special train provided by the Union Pacific Railroad, the merry hunting party chugged off for North Platte, Nebraska, where in five days of glorious indulgence they managed to slaughter hundreds of buffalo. Most were shot with large-caliber rifles, though Alexis is said to have killed one old cow at close range with his revolver.
Train companies offered passengers the opportunity to shoot buffalo from the windows of the coaches. The Northern Pacific advertised that Montana passengers could “either from the window or platforms of the moving train test the accuracy of their six-shooters by firing at the retreating herd.” Much like today’s Napa Valley Wine Train, buffalo-shooting excursions were promoted as “gala outings” with a complimentary gourmet lunch and Champagne. E. N. Andrews, a correspondent for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, described the moment when his touring train pulled to a stop alongside a small buffalo herd near Ellsworth, Nebraska. “In an instant a hundred car windows were thrown up, and the left of our train bristled with two hundred guns.” Unfortunately, from his perspective, most of the buffaloes got away except for two immense bulls that “were seen to stagger and fall.” Their tour guide, “the irrepressible Mr. Catts,” jumped down from the train, ran over to the largest bull, and “disemboweled him in but a few moments.” A rope was attached to the bull’s horns, and while the train’s band played “Yankee Doodle,” he was “dragged bodily into the front car and hoisted aboard,” to be embalmed and mounted once they returned to their starting point in Lawrence, Kansas. The celebratory passengers “christened” the bull Maximilian.
At the conclusion of his article, Andrews wrote that for him this outing was more educational than a trip to Europe, “to enlarge the conceptions of creation, and to give the peculiar tone of novelty, especially when for the first and perhaps last time one finds himself among the princely buffalo.” Inspired by articles such as these, hundreds of rich Americans and European noblemen traveled by rail from New York City to Omaha, Nebraska, or St. Louis, Missouri, a new rifle in one hand and a bottle of Champagne in the other, not just to shoot buffalo from train windows but to make brave safari among the herds and to bivouac among the cottonwood trees.
And, of course, it had to happen—there were buffalo killing contests. The record,
set by a Kansas homesteader, was 120 killed in just forty minutes. The most famous match was between William Frederick Cody and Billy Comstock, who shot it out for five hundred dollars and the right to the title “Buffalo Bill.” Early on a chilly morning in 1868, with snow and ice on the ground, a gathering of trappers, hunters, wolf-poisoners, soldiers, and some of the soldiers’ ladies from nearby Fort Wallace, Kansas, excitedly waited for the showdown to begin. At precisely eight a.m., mutual friend and stakeholder Carson Rivers raised his pistol and fired a shot to signify the start. Comstock jumped on his horse, galloped straight into the nearby peacefully grazing buffalo, and began chasing them down and killing them with his fast-shooting Henry repeating rifle. Cody took a different approach. Riding at a leisurely trot, he went clear around to the front of the herd, dismounted, squatted down on one knee, and began knocking them off from a distance with his larger-caliber Springfield Model 1863 rifle. He later named this rifle Lucretia Borgia after the legendary beautiful but ruthless Italian aristocrat who was the subject of a then-popular play by Victor Hugo. At four p.m., Rivers again fired his pistol to signal the end of the contest. Cody had won hands down, 69 to 46. The buffalo heads were delivered to the Kansas Pacific Railroad to be mounted and displayed around the country as part of a promotional campaign. The remains of the 115 carcasses were left on the frozen ground. Albeit headless, they would stay intact until the spring sun warmed them and the smell of chokecherry and wild rose blossom mingled with their stench to make a summer odor that was all too common on the plains—the odor of thousands of rotting buffalo carcasses.
Realizing that total extinction was close at hand, Cody and others began to favor new laws to protect the few buffaloes left standing. However, when Cody lobbied the Texas legislature to outlaw buffalo poaching on Indian lands, General Sheridan, who requested the opportunity to address the lawmakers, thwarted his change of heart. “For the sake of lasting peace,” Sheridan pleaded, “let the buffalo hunters kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo are exterminated. The Indians will forever cease to be a threat, and your prairies will be covered with speckled cattle.” The bill was defeated.
By 1890, the buffalo holocaust was over. Just one wild herd of twenty-three survived in a remote valley in Yellowstone Park, and, no surprise, Wyoming ranchers wanted to finish them off so they would not escape park grounds and somehow threaten their cattle. A coalition of naturalists and conservationists including Rubin Lloyd, the superintendent of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, backed by Teddy Roosevelt, lobbied Congress and blocked their efforts. Today the Yellowstone herd, numbering thirty-five hundred, is the world’s only continuous bison herd. Two of the Yellowstone bison were shipped to San Francisco as an acknowledgment of Superintendent Lloyd’s support. They were named Sarah Bernhardt, after the famous stage actress who had appeared in San Francisco at the Baldwin Theatre a few years before, and Ben Harrison, after the then president of the United States. Fortunately, they procreated, and the Golden Gate herd grew to one hundred. Two little herds of bison in public parks were all that remained of the millions that had roamed the plains only a few years earlier.
When Vernell and I acquired our first buffalo, their total population was still under five thousand. I was proud to be part owner of such majestic animals and marveled at their rugged independence. As might be expected from creatures that so dominated North America without human interference, our buffalo were perfectly suited for the environs of Vernell’s pasture. We didn’t have to feed them hay; they were perfectly happy eating prairie grass, which they chewed for hours, regurgitated, and chewed again. Impervious to bad weather, they didn’t need the shelter of a barn during heat waves or blizzards. When there was snow on the ground, they used their powerful front hooves to dig through it for the underlying brittle winter scrub and copper-colored grass. If the creek was frozen, they broke through its hard surface only if necessary, as they were otherwise content to get their water from eating snow. In early spring, they calved on their own and never required antibiotics or growth hormones to stay healthy and reach full size.
While balancing the vagaries and vicissitudes of my business life, I traveled to the rez as much as I could because it was such great fun to hang out with Vernell and see the buffalo. We would stand at the tall fence and just watch for what seemed like hours, and if they were too far out in the pasture, we would go through the gate and walk up to them, but not too close.
“If Jimi Hendrix looks at us and raises his tail,” Vernell would advise, “turn around and run for your life!”
And now, many years later, idling in Vernell’s pickup alongside the road, we are watching buffalo again as the last of the cows and calves saunter over the hill. The bull stands his ground, motionlessly staring, and I wonder if he feels challenged by us or perhaps by the pickup truck, but then he turns his back and follows in the path of his harem, leaving the land undisturbed. Vernell pushes the gearshift forward and we are on the road again. He looks over at me and says, “Do you remember when we went to that buffalo conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin?”
“Yeah! The first International Bison Conference. You danced with Jane Fonda.”
“No, you danced with her.”
“Well, one of us did.”
The day I discovered there was such a thing as the National Bison Association and that they were having a big event, I signed up Vernell; my wife, Jackie; and myself. I called Vernell and told him, “We’ve got to go. There’s no way around this,” and for once he immediately shared my enthusiasm. He didn’t pause to marvel as he often did at the fatuity of the white man; he too saw this as a potentially significant development. A few days later, Jackie and I flew from San Francisco to Denver, where we met up with Vernell in the airport and flew on to La Crosse.
Held at a downtown convention hall, the conference was one of those groundbreaking occasions that sometimes define the beginning of an industry. For me, it was like being at the first personal computer show. You could see, almost taste, the excitement felt by several hundred attendees, mostly ranchers from across the Midwest seeking a better way to make money than raising cattle. In the exhibit hall, people were selling a surprising array of bison-derived products: buffalo jerky and sausages, polished buffalo skulls, mounted heads, wallets, gloves, hats, handbags, robes, and jewelry. They were even taking orders for mail-order steaks packaged with dry ice. There was a two-day program of workshops and panels on nuts-and-bolts topics such as bison husbandry, disease management, marketing, and humane slaughtering practices. Everywhere I looked I saw charts forecasting future market growth, which in retrospect were ridiculously optimistic.
The major buzz that had everyone talking, however, had nothing to do with buffalo; it had to do with the presence of media mogul Ted Turner and his wife, Jane Fonda. Ted was fifty-five and Jane fifty-six; both looked glamorous but out of place dressed in much-too-stylish urban cowboy and cowgirl outfits in a crowd of down-home folks, men with scuffed boots, old Levi’s jeans, and misshapen hats, women in grandmotherly calico dresses and excessive turquoise jewelry. Still, Ted and Jane were a wondrous sight. Ted, with his trademark pencil mustache, full head of finger-combed alabaster hair, wry smile, and impish eyes, was easily the tallest man there; and Jane, whom I had thought of as anorexic, looked more like a healthy country girl with her ripe apricot complexion and a big, genuine smile that showcased her perfect teeth. Looking at her, I couldn’t help but think of Barbarella floating nude in weightless space.
Ted had recently purchased his third ranch, the 113,613-acre Flying D Ranch in Montana, which he was populating with buffalo. Scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the concluding banquet, he still came early, spent a great deal of time in the various workshops, walked around the convention hall shooting the breeze with the men. Jane too was very accessible, talking to everyone who wanted to meet her.
Turner always had a knack for contrary opinions, was known for his outrageous but memorable proclamations, and it was obvious that he loved having a beautif
ul, adoring actress for a spouse, but I doubt if he was prepared for the added layer of controversy Jane Fonda brought into his life. There was the tomahawk chop, for example. When the fans of his baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, adopted the Florida State Seminole war chant and chop, no one thought much of it until Jane was seen on national television standing alongside Ted making the chopping motion in unison with him and most of the fans. Then it became a big deal.
The regional director of the American Indian Movement, Aaron Two Elk of Atlanta, who grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, called the tomahawk chop “dehumanizing, derogatory and very unethical.” Tonya Gonella Frichner, president of the American Indian Law Alliance, simply could not believe that “Miss Progressive Jane Fonda” could sit there doing the chop. As far back as 1970, she could be counted upon to support native causes. That year Jane was the only non-Indian to join a hundred protesters from the Puyallup and Colville Confederated Tribes who occupied an unused army post in Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood called Fort Lawton. After prolonged conflict and negotiations, aided by the international media attention Jane brought to the cause when she was arrested, an agreement was reached whereby half the land became an environmental sanctuary called Discovery Park and the other half an Indian cultural center managed by the United Indians of All Tribes. Shortly after Fort Lawton, Jane showed up on Alcatraz Island during an even bigger occupation that was not so successful but which galvanized many Native Americans. Plus, she was at Wounded Knee!
And now she was doing the tomahawk chop alongside Ted Turner.
Good Friday on the Rez Page 18
