The American Buffalo
The buffalo, also known as the bison, is a huge animal that has two distinctive features, one being the shoulder hump and the other being their huge head. They are brown, their color varying slightly from the front and back of the animal. Their horns are black and curve upward and inward ending in a sharp tip. These herbivores have short, but firm legs and can weigh up to 2,500 pounds (PBS.org. “Buffalo Nation”). Bison were a key species in the middle to late 1800’s, as they were a large force that helped shape the ecology of the Great Plains. However, throughout American history, the buffalo has come to have much more significance than merely a massive animal wandering the plains. The American buffalo developed into a metaphorically symbolic meaning in the late 18th century to stand for a multitude of different things. There have come to be many symbols of the buffalo as seen in accounts of people such as “Buffalo Bill”, or the Buffalo Soldiers, the sacred buffalo of the Plains Indians and Native Americans and the tremendous effect that the buffalo has had on the expansion of the West. All of these different uses of the word buffalo incorporate the meaning and significance of the animal in someway that helps to describe the importance and impact that these massive animals have had on American History and the expansion of the West.
Buffalo were the first to exist in North America having migrated from Eurasia (PBS.org. “Buffalo Nation). They lived peacefully with the Native Americans who were the original owners of the land. The Native Americans lived off of the buffalo to survive, using every last piece of the buffalo for some beneficiary use. The horns were used as headdresses, skulls in religious festivals, the tongue was used for a hairbrush, the fur was used to make blankets, the bones to make knives, stomachs were used for cooking, ribs for children’s toy sleds in the winter, etc. (Bushnell, pg. 402). The buffalo and the Native...