Bison: Their influence on the cultures of the plains
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The Plains Indian mans' life revolved around the bison. His main food source was the meat of the bison. He prayed the the sun, the giver of life, the giver of bison to man. He believed that a stone found that resembled the head or body of the bison held great power.

To the Indian the bison was magic. Some believed that even after being eaten they could re-flesh themselves and live again.

It is estimated that there were 30 to 60,000,000 bison on the plains at their peak.

The plains culture was the bison culture, following the migration of the animal that fed and clothed them. Their ceremonies used the buffalo chip as tobacco. The buffalo chip was a sacred thing to swear on, or a pipe rest, or an altar or a sacred mound. Bits of hair, horn, and other parts were used as decoration because of the protection it offered. The hereafter was thought to be a place where "life and the hunting of buffalo went on as in the here and now."

Most bison cultures believed that the bison was a gift from the sun, the giver of life. The Cheyenne, Commanches, Blackfeet, and Crow all have their legends of how the bison came to be on Earth. The Crow story tells of how there was a race of giants who used bison as horses. They held their noses as other men ate the "stinking" meat. They gave four men bison they had kept in a hole in the ground. Many tribes use similar explanations for how herds of bison seemed to appear on the prairie.

To the Cree the bison made the greatest medicine of all the animals. He was larger (except for the grizzly bear), his numbers were greater, and his endurance more. When bison were hunted and killed, they would be thanked for giving up their lives.

Bison hides covered sweat lodges that faced towards an ancient bison skull. When the sweat was finished the man smoked to the bison and asked that the bison be plentiful, flesh itself and return to the herds.

Some tribes held that a man who was lucky enough to kill a white bison gained "buffalo power." Others would leave the dead animal un-skinned to rot and only count coup upon it. Still others were afraid to skin it and let others do the work being careful to make no gashes in the hide. They would then take the hide to be consecrated by a warrior, a medicine man, and a consecrated woman. In some cases it was believed that eating the flesh would make your hair turn prematurely gray.

The jet black bison was also rare and made big medicine, but not as strong as the white bison.

The brown bison bull often became gray and clay-caked. Men saw this as a change of color and would cover their bodies in mud to gain the bulls' power.

When scouts spotted bison, they would return to the camp and dancing would begin in order to draw the bison. Dancing might last for weeks until the bison were close. Dancing always brought the bison.

All tribes honored the bison during the Sun Dance. Tongue and backfat was gathered as well as the meat from a ritually killed bison. Painted bison skulls made altars.

Survival Economy - Uses of the Bison

The most important food resource to the people was the bison. It provided everything food, shelter, and clothing.

Food

Desirable parts of the bison to eat were the tongue, and the hump ribs. Some meat was dried and stored or pounded into a powdery substance and mixed with berries and suet. This mixture is called pemmican. Soup was made from the bones and flesh of the lower leg.

Shelter

To make teepees, the women would tan and sew together twelve to twenty bison hides. These teepees could easily hold ten to twelve people.

Clothes

Hides were made into robes.

Other uses

The bison provided other implements used in daily life: cups and spoons from Its horns, thread and bowstrings from sinew, water bags from the stomach, parfleche containers from the hide and other tools and utensils. Deer and elk were also hunted for food and clothing. Most clothing was made of buckskin. Other big game animals that were hunted for food Included antelope and big horn sheep.

Hunting practices

Men often hunted individually or in small groups, but large scale communal hunts were often more effective. Huge kills were often made which supplied everyone with meat and hides, including those unable or too old to hunt. In the pre-horse days, the most common method was to drive the bison over a cliff where they would be instantly killed or so badly wounded that they could easily be finished off. If the cliff was low, a corral would be built at the base of the cliff where the animals were impounded and easily killed. One can see old buffalo jump sites all over the reservation, especially near Bighorn Canyon. This method survived Into horse days and to some extent horses made it easier to drive the animals. Though used somewhat in pre-horse days, the "surround" method became more common with the acquisition of horses. The mounted hunters surrounded the herd and shot them with bows and "well placed" arrows. During the winter, bison would sometimes be stampeded Into snowdrifts or onto ice where they were helpless and could be killed on foot.

Trade

With the coming of white man, food and other goods became available through trade. Native peoples had long traded with each other, so seemed to have an established trade network.

The impact of trade was enormous. The technological advantages of new goods made life easier. A steel knife was much more efficient than a stone (flint). A Hudson Bay blanket was much lighter than a buffalo robe. The gun improved war and hunting efforts. Hunting locked the tribe into a dependency on the white man because the people could not manufacture or repair their own guns, ammunition, and parts.

Buffalo hide trade meant more animals were killed for trading purposes and this became even more devastating as thousands of white men came onto the plains to kill the buffalo in the 1860's to 1880's.

Crow Social Studies
Bilingual Materials Development Center
Crow Agency, Montana
1986

DUNG AND THE BISON

Buffalo chips served as fuel for Indian and frontiersman. The fresh dropping also served as home for thousands of invertebrates, who exploit it for food, shelter, and raising its' young. Flies, beetles, wasps, earwigs, springtails, and mites are common dung-dwellers.
As the chip slowly ages, the drying pile attracts different residents, who move in when the conditions suit them. Thus flies may congregate on nearby grass blades, slipping down on occasion to test the surface of the dung, waiting until it is dry enough for them to lay their eggs.
Some flies (Haimatobia) stick close to the herds so they can alight within seconds after each buffalo defecates. Other insects arrive with in three minutes by flying or walking along a spoor of wind-blown odors (which have been described as changing rapidly from a musky sweetness to an unpleasant stink). Dung beetles come a bit later, often themselves carrying numbers of hitchhiking flies and mites.
Most species remain only long enough to deposit their eggs, departing before the maggots and grubs hatch and begin feeding. The little colony is soon rife with all kinds of competition. Larvae of beetles and wasps devour or slowly kill fly maggots. Other species fight over space, often jostled by the clumsy maneuvering of a large dung-feeding beetle (Aphodius). Another beetle carts away so much of the cake's contents that fly maggots, if not killed in the transfer, are left to starve and dry up beneath an inedible crust; just one of these beetles can destroy the life of an entire dropping.
Most famous of all the dung-feeding beetles is the tumblebug. Gathering a large amount of manure, it works the mass into a ball, deposits an egg inside, and then rolls the contraption to a suitable nesting site, where the grub hatches and matures.

BUFFALO BIRDS AND THE BISON

The most common buffalo bird is the cowbird; others involved in the collaborations are the Brewer's blackbird, redwing, magpie, and starling.
The birds do not usually feed on their hosts' fur; instead, they hunt for Insects on the ground around the
buffalo, where an ever-present supply is concealed in the grass. As the buffalo move about, they stir up this hidden bonanza of leaf hoppers, grasshoppers, and other insects which are immediately seized by the birds.
Buffalo birds, also use their companions for lodging and rest. During a downpour on the treeless prairie, the back of a buffalo makes a snug perch. Even in fair weather the birds will roost on the "ridgepole" of an old bull's spine. In the winter the birds sink their feet deep into the fuzzy warmth of a buffalo's fur, fluffing out their feathers to seal in every calorie.
The buffalo also profits from this arrangement because of the removal of flies or other parasites, and, at the sign of danger, arouse him by fluttering and crying about him and picking at his head.

WOLVES AND THE BISON

Wolves on the American frontier were unquestionably the buffalo's most formidable foes. The buffalo seemed oblivious to danger, treating their potential assailants with a strange indifference. A possible explanation for this behavior was suggested by George Catlin, who wrote that the buffalo "are aware of their own superiority in combined force, and seem to have no dread of the wolf, allowing him to sneak amidst their ranks, apparently like one of their own family." We have seen how stalking Indians took advantage of this curious indifference, sometimes crawling boldly toward the herds under wolf skins.
Infant losses from predation, disease, or other natural factors can still be considerable. A little more than half of each season's crop of calves is eliminated during the first year. In past centuries according to the Pawnee estimate, wolves brought down a third of the calves.
Even if the buffalo under attack is young and frail, wolves may have difficulty bringing it down. The ideal situation for a wolf is to surprise a buffalo alone on the open prairie, where the victim's chance is slim. When a few buffalo are under attack, they bunch together to prevent assailants from singling out Individual animals.

GRIZZLIES AND THE BISON

Grizzlies were capable of killing buffalo, but did so rarely. A dead buffalo attracted many hungry grizzlies, who feasted until nothing remained but a few bones and tufts of fur .

FOOD CHAIN AND THE BISON

Grasses and other foliage supporting most food chains fall under the assault of numerous grazers, groups like insects, rodents, and ungulates, which keep the vegetation closely cropped. One would expect an animal so ponderous and plentiful as the buffalo to be the predominant force in reaping the greenery, but, surprisingly, In many preserves it is not.
In the tall-grass prairie of the northern plains, most of the grass Is consumed not by the hulking buffalo, but by the tiny meadow vole.
Damage occurs to the ecosystem when a buffalo bull spots the provocative slope of a prairie dog crater, a ready-made wallowing place. Walking deliberately up to the mound, he paws it, pierces its crumbly rim with his horns and lies down to roll in the loose earth, flattening everything in a cloud of dust and a cascade of soil, sometimes even choking off the entrance to the burrow.

VEGETATION AND THE BISON

Patches of greener herbage spring up in each fertilized area .
Buffalo destroy vegetation by vigorously horning and rubbing against trees sometimes stripping off so much bark that a tree will die. Persistent horning can stop the growth of new trees and may push back the border of a forest .

BALANCE OF THE GRASSLAND AND THE BISON

Eventually the grassland balance was upset by the arrival of professional hunters and fur traders, groups that would bring the bison to the brink of extinction, thereby disrupting the community of creatures whose lives were intimately linked with the ways of the herds. In a short period of time, the network of species that had formed a smoothly functioning whole fell apart. Some of these animals were able to make the transition to the newly domesticated plains: buffalo birds shifted to cattle, just as the tiny world of scavenging insects found a new home in cattle dung. Grizzly bears and wolves shrank back to the mountains and the Indians retired to reservations.

NATURAL CATASTROPHES AND THE BISON

In 1867, four thousand bison attempting to ford the Platte River in Nebraska walked into the channels of loose quicksand at the water's edge and sank into the sand. Over two thousand bison lay mired and dying in the riverbed.
Because they bunched together in herds, many died when food supplies were limited. And close contact often spread parasites and disease. Two most dangerous diseases were anthrax and tuberculosis.
Bison were not quick to process danger and would be carried away by swift water currents or fall through ice and drown .
Harsh winters presented hardships, as did tornadoes and prairie fires.

McHugh, Tom, The Tale of the Buffalo, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; 1972, pp. 218-246.

STORYTELLERS

Gather children in an outside area to tell stories .
Set the mood by describing a scene from yesterday . An example would be the following:
"On a crisp evening late in the fall of 1876, the glow of the dying sun lingered along the Montana horizon , out lining the peaked forms of several lodges . Across the top flaps of a weathered teepee , orange flickers played back and forth as the woman inside stirred the fire and positioned over it a kettle brimming with choice cuts of buffalo. Nearby, the man of the lodge busied himself mixing shreds of tobacco and weeds .
A l ittle later, the warrior gathered his family together and invited a few friends in for an evening of storytelling. Family and guests were soon settled about the f ire awaiting the arrival of chief of the tribe and an esteemed narrator of sacred myths. As he took his place in the group, the men made the customary offering of smoke from a pipe , thereby launching the evening's program .
Tell or read a story about the bison . See bibliography.