American Buffalo

by Steven Rinella

  I think about this last point often as I butcher the buffalo. Every schoolboy knows that the Indians used every part of the buffalo, which is true. But they did not use every part of every buffalo. Their relationship with buffalo reminds me of my own relationship with the one-and two-liter bottles of tonic water that I buy for making vokda tonics. Now and then, I’ll have occasion to cut the top off one of these bottles and use it as a funnel for putting salad dressing ingredients into a bottle. I’ll also cut off the bottoms of tonic bottles and use them as containers for soaking rusted mechanical parts in solvent or freezing fish fillets. Perforated, they make good bait canisters for crab trapping. Sometimes I’ll ice my catch of fish with tonic bottles that were filled with water and placed in the freezer overnight. It keeps the water inside clean, so after the ice melts, you can still drink the water. Once you drink the water, you can put the lid back on and tie monofilament around the neck of the bottle and use it as a buoy to mark the place where you caught the fish.

  So, as you see, one could argue that I use every last part of my tonic bottles. The truth is, though, I only need so many funnels and bait cans. Nine times out of ten, I’ll just drink the tonic and toss the bottle into the recycling bin. In the same way, Indians only needed so many implements and decorations. If a tribe drove three hundred buffalo over a cliff, they wouldn’t feel obligated to make twenty-four hundred buffalo-hoof spoons and six hundred buffalo-horn charcoal carriers. Rather, they might just take the meat and hides from the best-looking female buffalo, those that weren’t too smashed up or buried under other buffalo. That might be all they touched. After all, their time and energy had value, just as ours does.

  The Indians’ relationship to the buffalo was complex and beautiful, not because of the Indians’ unwavering frugality with the buffalo but because of their unwavering inventiveness with the animal. Describing this inventiveness tests the limits of my tonic bottle analogy. While I might use tonic bottles for many purposes, I do not know how to cut tonic bottles with knives made from tonic bottles; I’m not wearing a tonic bottle right now, and I’m not living inside a tonic bottle house.

  Indians would use untanned skins, or rawhide, to make buckets, mortars, war shields, drums, splints, cinches, lariats, packing straps, knife sheaves, saddles, blankets, stirrups, masks, ornaments, quirts, snowshoes, boats, and moccasin soles. They’d use tanned buffalo hides to make moccasin uppers, blankets, beds, winter coats, shirts, leggings, dresses, belts, bridles, quivers, backrests, bags, tapestries, sweat lodge covers, tipi covers, and tipi liners. The skin from the hind leg could be taken directly off the buffalo and used as emergency footwear. Indians would make baby cradles with tanned buffalo hides, and they’d make buffalo-skin sacks for carrying their babies on trips. If an infant was orphaned, it might be wrapped in a buffalo robe and left in the arms of its dead mother on a burial scaffold lashed together with strips of buffalo hide.

  Indians would use buffalo hair, particularly the hair on the buffalo’s forehead, to stuff pillows, dolls, sleeping pads, and medicine balls.* They’d insulate their moccasins with buffalo hair. They’d braid buffalo hair into ropes and use the ropes to make headdresses, bracelets, hairpieces, bridles, and halters. The Comanche wove lariats from such coarse buffalo hair that the ropes appeared to be growing hair, like a caterpillar. Left together, the tailbone and its covering of hair were used as fly swatters, whips, decorations, and children’s toys. The Indians would remove the buffalo’s beard and use it as a decoration.

  The shoulder blades of the buffalo were crafted into boat paddles and gardening implements, such as shovels and hoes. Other bones made good fleshing tools, smoking pipes, arrowheads, sled runners, saddle frames, war clubs, scrapers, awls, paintbrushes, sewing needles, gaming dice, knives and knife handles, and forks and spoons. The horns were used as ladles, head ornaments, bow laminates, powder horns, arrowheads, and decorative flourishes on headwear.

  Buffalo teeth were used as ornaments for clothing. Brains and livers were used to treat leather. Indians would wash out a buffalo’s stomach and use it as a kettle, a washing basin, a water bucket, or as packaging material for meat. When dried out, buffalo tongues become prickly; Indians used these tongues as hair combs. They’d dry the scrotums out and use them as rattles. The rattle’s handle might be a buffalo bone. Bladders were made into balloons, flotation devices, and waterproof pouches. They’d also use bladders to store buffalo marrow or buffalo fat. The fat would be used as a pomade-like hair treatment, as a base for medicine or cosmetics, and as a cooking oil, a food item, and a waterproofing agent. Indians would cook the hooves and noses down into glue. They’d use tendons and sinews from the buffalo to make bowstrings and cords. The best and most durable sinews came from alongside the spine. These could be split into fine, strong threads for sewing clothes. The thread was also used to lash points and feathers to arrows that could be used to kill more buffalo.

  As I’m handling the dead buffalo, I have a desire to experiment with some of these ideas. I’d like to make a balloon with the bladder and let it float in the river. I’m also curious what it would look like if I painted my face with buffalo fat that’s been dyed black with the ash from buffalo chips. In a way, though, doing those things seems like a form of cultural hijacking. I could learn what it feels like to have my face smeared with buffalo fat, but that wouldn’t tell me what it’s like to believe that I was harnessing the power of the buffalo. And without feeling both of those things, I imagine that it’s difficult to properly feel either one of them.

  With the tongue removed, I prop the buffalo’s chin on a rock and cut through the hide all the way around the neck. My incision is just behind the ears. I cut through the meat of the neck and sever the spine with my bone saw. The head is heavy and hard to lift. I straddle it in a bowlegged stance and grab the horns, so that the buffalo’s head and I are facing the same direction. Lifting with my legs, I waddle down the hill to the edge of my fire. I skipped breakfast, so I cut a couple of alder whips and spear a few strips of meat on the end of each. I poke the other ends into the ground and position the meat over the fire to cook. It curls in the heat.

  Skinning the head takes an hour or so. The frozen hide and muscle are especially hard to work with. When my fingers get too cold, I stop to warm them over the fire while I chew a couple pieces of meat. It takes me longer than I think it should to pry the severed vertebrae away from the skull’s foramen magnum. It’s also very difficult to remove the lower jaw because the buffalo’s powerful jaw muscles had clenched in death like a pair of locking pliers. I have to wiggle my knife blade up into the bone pockets that encase the jaw hinges and then blindly pry and poke until things start to loosen up. Eventually the jaw has a bit of wiggle to it. Sitting on the ground with the buffalo head standing on its neck between my knees, I hold the horns with my hands and use my boot heel to push away on the front teeth of the lower jaw. The jaw snaps free with a crunching and popping noise.

  I run my fingers over the teeth. A buffalo has molars on its upper and lower jaws, but it has incisors only on its lower jaw. The incisors press against the dental pad of the upper jaw to snip off pieces of vegetation. To a trained eye, a buffalo’s age can be determined by the condition of the incisors.* The emergence and wear patterns are somewhat standard on buffalo until the animals are about five or six years of age. After that, the particular environment where the buffalo lives will affect its teeth as much as its age does. Buffalo living in areas with short grass will crunch more dirt and sand than buffalo living in areas with taller grass; as a consequence, their teeth will wear down sooner. Because a buffalo cannot outlive its teeth, its life expectancy is influenced by its grazing conditions. This is one of the reasons domesticated buffalo live longer than wild buffalo. If a buffalo eats cut hay and doesn’t have to scrape every meal off the ground, it can easily live into its twenties or thirties. If a buffalo living in the wild is really careful and really lucky, it will survive long enough to enter old age—around twelve to fifteen year
s; they seldom last longer than that.

  I slice away as much of the flesh as possible from the head and then empty out the eye sockets. The fat behind the eyes has an unusual texture. I read somewhere that Plains Indians liked to eat this fat along with the eyeballs when the animal was fresh dead. I once ate the olive-sized eyeballs out of a roasted hog, but I can’t stomach the idea of eating an eye that’s as big as a small plum. You’d have to bite into it and tear out a piece instead of sucking it back like an oyster. I toss the eyes toward the bird pile but save a tablespoon of the fat in my cooking pan.

  The head begins to look like a skull, clean and white. Buffalo skulls were put to various uses by Indians, most of a spiritual or metaphysical nature. The buffalo skull was an especially potent symbol to many Plains Indians tribes, but not because it equaled death. Rather, a skull represented a form of rebirth to many tribes. To reduce a buffalo to its skeleton was like ushering the animal back to a sort of primordial starting line, or beginning. The clean skull allowed for continuity, like a blank canvas upon which future buffalo could be created. In 1875, travelers along the Platte River found a spot where Indians had arranged buffalo skulls in “circles, curves and other mathematical figures” across the prairie. Indians explained that the practice pleased buffalo and encouraged them to come near. The Arikara of the Missouri valley would stuff the eye sockets of buffalo skulls with sage leaves and then set the skulls in lines across the prairie. The lines might be fourteen skulls long. An Arikara man explained to a white man that this treatment appeased the skulls and dissuaded them from issuing warnings to their brother buffalo about the dangers of approaching an Arikara village. In conducting Sun Dances, men would tie leather cords to buffalo skulls and then fasten those cords to their skin with bone needles. They would dance, pulling the skulls behind them, until their skin ripped away and freed the skulls. The self-mutilation was considered by some to be a sacrifice to both the sun and the buffalo, which were not entirely separate entities. Each was a sort of co-sponsor of life on earth, and they were bound together by their generosity toward man.

  I’m not a particularly religious person, though I do sense an inkling of the spiritual when I look at this buffalo skull. Many people have tried to explain to me what they feel when they look at a crucifix or Torah scroll; it’s an emotion often described as a mixture of gratitude, devotion, continuity, and awe. Looking at a buffalo skull is probably the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing those feelings, however faintly, and I’m glad to have a taste of that. I imagine this skull sitting next to my old skull from Montana, and I like the image very much. To thwart trophy hunters, it’s illegal in Alaska to transport an animal’s skull, horns, or hide ahead of its meat. So this skull will be the last thing out of here, and I probably won’t be able to haul it until tomorrow. For now, I give it a nice home against a tree so that I can look up and admire it while I work.

  It’s getting toward noon and I still haven’t finished butchering the upward-facing half of the buffalo. The ribs and neck are all that remain. With my large knife, I make a cut straight down into the center of the back of the neck. The cut runs lengthwise, starting where I severed the head, and I begin slicing away the fillet of neck meat as one large piece. I’m removing an eight-or nine-pound slab of meat shaped like a large dictionary. The neck bone is left mostly clean. With that done, I cut the meat from over and between the ribs, which leaves them looking like bars on a jail cell window.

  I figure that I should take one or two loads down to the Chetaslina now, in order to spread out the misery of lugging the weight. Plus, I want to make sure that nothing’s disturbing the meat. Getting the back leg into my pack is like trying to stuff a really fat kid into a sleeping bag while he’s lying on the floor and playing stiff-as-a-board. The thickest part of the leg, near the femur’s ball joint, is too big around for the pack’s opening. I undo the clasp on the pack’s draw cord, and the aperture increases just enough to accommodate the leg. After reassembling the draw cord, I get the leg strapped into place so it doesn’t wobble too much. I sit with my back to the pack and pull the straps on, then struggle to my feet and grab my rifle.

  There’s a tricky spot along my trail to the Chetaslina. From the ridgetop, the kill site looks like it’s close to the valley floor. Actually, though, it’s on a bench of land about twenty feet above the valley floor. The drop-off is steep, and yesterday I went back and forth looking for a good place to climb down. But there’s only one good route within a couple hundred yards in either direction, a narrow game trail trampled into the hillside on a steep pitch. The first two times I used the trail it was fine, but now it’s starting to get icy. I take a couple of steps downhill while using a few small saplings as handholds. Suddenly my feet swing out from under me as easily as they would in a weightless chamber. The sapling slips from my hand and I come down fast. The weight on my back makes it feel as if I’ve fallen off an extension ladder. I hit so hard that my teeth knock together and gash my tongue, and then I’m sliding and rolling down the hill with the pack on my back and the rifle barrel somehow tangled in my legs. I hit the bottom of the hill with my wind knocked out. I catch my breath and roll clear of the pack. The gash on my tongue feels deep and tastes like metal. I spit up a mouthful of blood. There’s a bunch of snow packed beneath the rifle’s scope. I clear that out with a stick and use a corner of my shirt to wipe down the rifle’s action. I’m sure that I probably knocked the hell out of my scope, but that hardly matters now. If I need to shoot at something, it’s going to be close. There’s a throbbing pain in my hip when I stand up. I don’t want to let it get too stiff, so I hurriedly chase down some ibuprofen with a handful of snow and start walking.

  I stay at the Chetaslina just long enough to fill my water bottle and unload the buffalo’s back leg. There aren’t any new grizzly tracks around. Maybe the bears have given up and will just wait until I leave; maybe they’ll come back once it gets dark. When I start back into the woods, headed toward the carcass, I can feel the air warming up. The snow load is coming out of the spruce trees like rainwater. My pants get soaked from climbing over tree trunks and brushing against wet limbs. I take it easy while climbing the hillside that I just fell down. At the top I start scrounging around for dry wood. The fire is burned down to ash, but I wake it up with a few spruce twigs and then pile on the sticks I collected. Soon it’s ripping enough that my pants and shirt are rolling with steam while I stand next to it. Once the fire burns down a bit, I’ll put the pan of fat on the coals and fry some scraps of meat.

  It takes a long time to get the carcass rolled over and the hide and remaining two legs removed. I get lost in the work and lose track of the hours. I stop just long enough to look for bears and chew a few scraps of the meat. The hide is almost too heavy to lift. There’s a lot of meat and gristle stuck to it, especially around the shoulder hump. The edges of the belly are coated in fat. My guess is that fleshing the hide down to bare leather will reduce the weight by almost half. That won’t happen until tomorrow, though, so I roll the hide up, like an old-fashioned sleeping bag. Then I get to thinking that it might freeze into a cylinder and I won’t be able to get it open. I cut a pole with my saw and lash the pole between two trees at the height of my throat. The pole is thick, about four inches in diameter, a good size for a fleshing beam. I drape the hide over the pole like I’m putting laundry out to dry. Hair side down, skin side out, the hide hangs nearly down to the forest floor.

  The buffalo hide on fleshing beam.

  I spend another half hour hauling the second back leg down to the Chetaslina. It’s funny, carrying another creature’s leg when my own leg is hurting so bad. It feels like something’s clicking inside my hip every time I take a step. Once I’m ready to head back toward the kill site, I notice that I have a problem. It’s already close to dusk, and it’s obvious that I’m going to be out here messing around in the pitch black. I can’t sleep up here, because I stupidly left my sleeping bag and tarp down at my main camp along the Copper. I’
d have to spend the night lying next to the fire and would be awake all night, freezing my ass off while embers landed on my clothes and burned a bunch of holes in them. I’d almost rather get mauled by rabid coyotes than go through that. My other option would be to head to the Copper now, without going back to the carcass, but I left my gear lying around. If it snows tonight, it’ll get covered up and lost, and the clothes that I left out will get wet. The only thing that makes sense, I suppose, is to go up there and get my stuff and then walk back to camp in the dark.

  I keep moving as quick as I can up to the carcass, then gather my gear and load up the front shoulder and a few other cuts of meat. When I start back toward the Chetaslina, it’s almost fully dark. The cloud cover has been thinning out, and now the moonlight is filling the woods. I can’t see the moon, but the sky is bright enough to cast thin, faint shadows. Walking along, I think of how animals tend to be more active on moonlit nights. I wonder if that’s actually true, or if it’s just that you see more animals on moonlit nights because it’s not so dark and you can see more of everything. I’m annoyed with myself because of the fear, though it does seem well-founded. My clothes are full of blood, and I’m carrying one hundred pounds of red meat in bear country. When I get to the steep slope with the slick trail, I sit on my ass and slide down. At the bottom I hear a cracking limb off to my side, and I wonder if it’s a clump of falling snow or a footstep. I haven’t chambered my rifle all day, but I work the bolt and load a round. After a few more steps I hear it again; this time there’s no mistake. I stop to listen. It’s walking off through the woods, headed away from me. Whatever it is, it’s moving slowly, as though going about its usual business.