Restoring Buffalo to the Dakota Plains::

Indian Hunters on the Plains III

In the aftermath of Wounded Knee, the Lakota tried to acclimatise to their new and drastically reduced circumstances. They had been forced onto reservations, to eat a new kind of meat - beef - that had been highly managed and gave the Lakota diseases to contend with. They had been given a new religion to learn and live by. But despite this, the tribal elders and medicine men strove to protect their heritage. Secretively stories were told over and over again, ceremonies were performed, the language was spoken.

Fools Crow was a first-generation reservation Indian and an Oglala Lakota medicine man, who died in 1989. He learned from his grandparents all there was to know about Wakantanka, the Lakota's relationship with the buffalo and the White Buffalo Calf Woman. He told Thomas Mails:

"The buffalo were all gone, and all I knew as a boy about buffalo was the stories the old people told about how many there used to be […]. As a matter of fact, the first time I saw a living buffalo was in 1913, when we were on a train on our way to Salt Lake City. We passed by a place where a white man had eight of them. He was out there feeding them, and they were tame. This was contrary to everything I had been told about them, and I was amazed. My people had said it really took courage to go after a buffalo and bring him down. So it made me wonder what kind of a white man this must be who so fearlessly fed these monstrous animals" (Mails 1979: 66-67).¹

Cattle was known as 'spotted buffalo'. Initial encounters with the new, tame animal were often disheartening. The Oglala Lakota chief, Standing Bear:

"We had heard about these spotted buffalo, but had never seen them. So we got on our ponies and rode over to the agency with some of the men. What a terrible odor met us! It was awful! We had to hold our noses. Then I asked my father what was the matter around there, as the stench was more than I could stand. He told me it was the odor of the spotted buffalo. Then I asked him if we were going to be obliged to eat those terrible animals" (Standing Bear 1928: 59).²

Notes::

• 1 - Thomas E. Mails. 1979. Fools Crow. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• 2 - Luther Standing Bear. 1928. My People, the Sioux. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

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