the morning bite: a case for bison
just some thoughts about the historical significance of the american buffalo, the horrors of systemic greed/racism, and why i think the bald eagle is the least patriotic symbol we have
Welcome back!
You are at my kitchen table. It’s an old wooden one that I obtained from Facebook Marketplace. There are some scratches and rings where I’ve accidentally left a hot mug of tea for too long. On the table, there’s a small Tiffany lamp that is adorned with abstract tulips. Next to it is a metal pitcher filled with multicolored baby’s breath that has long since expired. This is on purpose. Dead flowers are often safer in my house than live ones. Hence, the assortment of dried blooms hanging from just about everywhere.
I live in an old building with tall windows. The morning light streams through both them and my white curtains in a way that feels cinematic. The walls are a tea green. The floors are marred by paw prints from the creature who lives with me. Further evidence of this cryptid manifests in the crate and bed on the other side of the table.
There is a refrigerator that has become a hazardous territory of magnets holding on for dear life and dry erase notes that I’m sure have ingrained themselves into eternity at this point.
The butcher block counters only have two states of being. Clean or the Battle of Waterloo. There is most likely some manner of cookware on the stove that I’ve yet to get into the dishwasher. There are also at least a handful of fruit flies that taunt me regularly with their existence.
This is my space.
Have a seat.
“the morning bite” will be a series of short, unglamorous musings from yours truly while seated at the kitchen table for breakfast. Maybe sometimes from my porch, but who’s to know?
Menu:
Strawberries and bananas with Greek yogurt and honey.
Poison of choice: A tea from a local favorite (shout out to Churchill’s Teas). This one is called Turkish Bazaar and remains one of my favorite black teas from their collection.
I wish I were thinking of some lofty philosophical premise to share with you this morning, but I have to be true to the premise of this little experiment.
As I sit here consuming my strawberries and waiting for my tea to cool, there is only one prominent thing that keeps tugging on the sleeve of my brain.
I’m thinking about bison.
This is not a particularly new occurrence. I’ve developed a love for this creature over the last several years, but I have been informed by the interwebs that today marks the start of National Bison Month!
Now, before you decide to get out of Dodge and throw up your best peace sign, I only ask for the opportunity to prove to you why our national mammal is worthy of your attention span this muggy Tuesday morning.
The bison, also known as the American Buffalo, is nature’s fuzziest tank. The males can weigh as much as 2,000 pounds and reach a height of 6 feet. Yet even with all this collective mass, these bovine units can reach speeds of up to 35mph. That is both vehicular speed and vehicular weight that could come barreling in your direction should you be unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of their wrath.
At their peak, historians estimate that there were some 30 million bison that once roamed North America. These herds were so large that it is said you could not see the end of them. They were a shifting, grazing sea of fur and muscle. The gentle giants would walk the length of this continent when it was still wild and untainted by colonization.
However, after years of exploitation, brutality, wasteful gluttony, and unashamed attempts at enforcing the assimilation of Native American tribes, the bison were hunted toward the brink of extinction. At their lowest, their numbers were a little over 300. Historians to this day say there is no other phenomenon like it. In Ken Burns’ American Buffalo (could not recommend enough!), one of the commentators stated, "There is no story anywhere in world history that involves as large a destruction of wild animals as happened in North America in the Western United States…”
Buffalo hunters would shoot down herds with militaristic efficiency. Even crafting guns so that they could kill with more ease and better accuracy. They would skin the bison for their furs and for their tongues, but would then leave the rest of the carcass rotting where it lay. It is said that this highly unethical practice created fields upon fields of stench and decay. Open graveyards that were a testament to the cardinal American sin of greed. And because the buffalo calves held no economic value, they would roam these graveyards crying out for their mothers until they died of starvation. It was a gut-churning sight. There are even journal entries from buffalo hunters who questioned the morality of their own destructive operation.
This mass slaughter was felt most keenly by Native Americans, for whom the buffalo were not only a food source but a sacred creature with high spiritual significance. Unlike the White settlers, Native people would harvest the whole animal so as to leave as little waste as possible and honor the sacrifice of this noble beast on their behalf.
Their stories are intertwined and rooted in one another.
The United States government knew this.
The genocide of indigenous people and the killing of bison did not happen side by side on accident. The government actively had a vested interest in the extinction of the wild buffalo and openly admitted to this on multiple occasions. The goal was to starve indigenous people either into death itself or into abandoning their tribal way of life so that they would have no other option but to become like the White farmers and ranchers who had since invaded much of the West. Many White people were vocally disgusted by letting good soil lie fallow. In other words, the idea of letting your land rest was an alien concept. Every stitch of creation was meant to be overturned and subdued for every penny you could extract from it. You were not to befriend nature, you were to become its overlord and master.
And as if that were not bad enough, while religious and federal institutions were kidnapping Native children and forcing them into schools to undo their heritage through torture and humiliation, settlers were simultaneously trying to breed bison into becoming exclusively cattle animals like their own common cows and oxen. The message was loud and clear: “Your only way to exist in our version of America is to not remain as you are.”
Sound familiar?
Yet, both indigenous people and the American buffalo have rebelled against this narrative with every fiber of their being. They would not be buried. They would not be made into trophies for “manifest destiny” or gluttonous men. They are both still here and still fighting.
While still relatively low considering their original numbers, bison have clawed their way from the brink of extinction. There are over 500,000 as of today! And while a great many of even these remain in captivity on ranches, conservationists have been working diligently to restore the wild population with increasing levels of success. Indigenous people have been a critical component in advocating for the care of these magnificent beasts that they share such a kinship with, and that we have the privilege of sharing land with.
Isn’t it intriguing that instead of clinging to the image of our national mammal, we typically use the bald eagle to symbolize America? A bird that steals for a living. A bird whose noble screech that we hear on TV is often actually the call of a red-tailed hawk (real bald eagles sound way more whiny). Our own Benjamin Franklin is quoted to have said this of our rather sinister mascot: “He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. … Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District.”
There is something poetically tragic about us choosing to be defined by a symbol of greed and cowardice rather than the patient, unhurried buffalo who survived our best attempts to snuff it out of existence. Heaven forbid we be reminded of our communal sins, right?
Bison are a haunting yet beautiful cautionary tale to us on the consequences of gluttony, systemic racism, hostility against conservation, and short-sighted imaginations. Yet that is not all they are.
They are also symbols of resistance, loyalty, and an unquenchable spirit that is not defined by what has been, but by what will be.
The story of the American Buffalo holds up a mirror to the United States. There’s no sugar-coating it. What we see is ugly. But within the bison’s redemption, there are also reflections of the good that unity and diversity are capable of. Through these fuzzy tanks, we are shown what can come to pass when we actually live our shared values instead of being acquainted with them on a name-only basis. There are examples of courage and champions of justice in this tale. You have to sift through a lot of carnage to find them, but they’re there!
Happy National Bison Month, one and all!
-JHM