American Buffalo

 

Steven Rinella’s new book American Buffalo:  In Search of a Lost Icon, is getting good chatter:  Bill McKibben blurbs it as “some of the best writing on our great national beast since George Catlin–and that was in 1841. A real triumph.”  The folks at VSL write that  “it sets that mythic resonance against hard ecological realities brought on by the animal’s resurgent population.”

The book caught my eye because I have just been reading the official account of the Long Expedition, the first scientific exploration of the American West.  And I was astonished to discover that the near-extermination of the buffalo was already well under way as early as 1819.  Here’s what the great (forgotten) American naturalist Thomas Say wrote:

 “It is common for hunters to attack large herds of these animals, and having slaughtered as many as they are able, from mere wantonness and love of this barbarous sport, to leave the carcasses to be devoured by the wolves and birds of prey; thousands are slaughtered yearly, of which no part is saved except the tongues.  This inconsiderate and cruel practice, is undoubtedly the principal reason why the bison flies so far and so soon from the neighbourhood of our frontier settlements.”

I was also impressed that, 70 years before the start of the conservation movement, Say was already arguing for protective game laws:  “It would be highly desirable, that some law for the preservation of game, might be extended to, and rigidly enforced in the country, where the bison is still met with:  that the wanton destruction of these valuable animals, by the white hunters, might be checked or prevented.”