192.2 - American Bison (or Buffalo!)
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If you see one out grazing, it looks so slow. It's like a parked car sitting there. But they can clear six-foot fences. They can jump a horizontal jump of seven feet. They can hit a speed, hit a speed of 35 miles an hour. And you're talking about something that can get going that speed that's 1,800 pounds.

Hi, everybody. My name is Shawna, and this is the American English Podcast. My goal here is to teach you the English spoken in the United States. Through common expressions, pronunciation tips, and interesting cultural snippets or stories, I hope to keep this fun, useful, and interesting. Let's do it.

Hi everyone, welcome back. That introduction was taken from a PBS documentary, The American Buffalo. It's really good, highly recommend it. I'll post the link in the episode notes. Now you may be wondering, what's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? That was the first question I had when researching this topic.

And the answer is, well, a lot. Despite being from the same family, Bovidae, bison and buffalo have different hair, different horn shapes, and different temperaments. So bison are known to be a little bit moody. So that's just to name a few things. So which one lives in the United States? Technically, bison.

But most native English speakers from the U.S. call the bison that roam here buffalo. We've been doing this since early European settlers came to the U.S. and said, hey, that looks like a buffalo. The name stuck, even though real buffalo are technically from Africa, Asia, and now live in parts of Europe, especially in those areas where buffalo mozzarella is made.

So today we'll be talking about American bison or buffalo, which are the largest land mammals on the continent. And I'll be honest, this episode was very surprising to me. A lot of what I learned during my research was new.

and at the same time, important information in the scheme of U.S. history. So be sure to listen to the very end. I don't want you to miss any of it. I hope you find it entertaining as well. We'll begin today's episode by talking about these massive creatures. Then we'll talk about the fundamental role bison have in Native American cultures.

which is the reason why the U.S. government supported plans to get rid of them. That seems contradictory, doesn't it? Anyway, that was back in the mid to late 1800s, and it led to the largest animal destruction in modern history. Now, it's disturbing, and it'll give you a really good idea of the sentiment towards natives back in the 1800s,

Anyway, the U.S. government supported policies to get rid of bison. And so at one point, they were nearly extinct. So that means they were endangered. So these creatures were nearly extinct. They were endangered, but they have made a comeback. So they're now flourishing in multiple areas throughout the United States. So we'll talk about where you can see them if you're here.

And one of those places is really crazy, and it has a kind of a cool story. So be sure to stay tuned once again until the end. As we go along, I'll explain challenging words and phrases. But if you would like the full transcript for this episode to read along, be sure to sign up to premium content at AmericanEnglishPodcast.com. You'll also find the link to season four in the episode notes.

So let's start by imagining a scene. You're out west. Maybe you're in Montana, which is the northwest part of the United States. It's where you'd find Yellowstone. And the sun's just starting to set in the sky. It casts a golden light over the rolling plains. And then in the distance, you see a silhouette, right? The shaded figure of a man.

of something. It's not a horse. It's not a cow. It's not an ox. It's a bison. And it's not just one. It's a whole herd walking slowly across the grasslands. For over 60 million years, these creatures have roamed the continent long before train tracks and roads ran across them.

And for the past 12,000 years, as far as we know, they've lived alongside humans. So we've coexisted with them. Now, bison are the largest land mammals in North America. Bulls, the males, can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, which is about the size of a pickup truck.

But somehow, in spite of their size, they can run up to 40 miles per hour. They can jump over fences that are six feet high and even swim across rivers. These guys are real athletes, but they don't exercise 24-7. If you get the chance to see a bison in the U.S., you'll see how they move. It's not in a hurry. It's not in a hurry.

Nine to 11 hours per day, they spend grazing and resting. Grazing means to eat small amounts of grass or plants. We usually use that verb with animals like goats, sheep, or cows. You can kind of imagine them in the pasture just eating and eating and eating. That's called grazing. It's a small amount of food often.

So if the land is green and healthy, bison will eat up to 24 pounds of grass, weeds, and twigs in a single day. That's a lot of veggies, right? They're herbivores.

which essentially means they're vegetarians. We don't really often call animals vegetarians. We have these other terms for animals we use, like herbivore, meaning they only eat veggies, omnivore, meaning they eat veggies and meat, and carnivore, right? So a lot of dinosaurs were carnivores.

Of course, when humans speak, I don't think there are any carnivores out there, but definitely some vegetarians. One other cool thing I learned about bison is that they help other animals. They like to roll around on the ground and create indentations called wallows. So these little wallows, these indentations, these divots in the ground fill up with rainwater and

and it then serves as a source of water for animals on the plains. During wintertime, the bison herds decrease in size in order to find food more easily, and because there's snow on the plains, they need to dig their head into the ground to find grass.

And by doing this, they create pathways for other animals like deer and rabbits and animals in the wild to roam. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Bison were named the national mammal of the United States in 2016. A mammal is a term we use to describe animals that have maybe fur on their skin. They don't lay eggs, so they have natural births.

and they feed their babies milk. So bison are mammals, and bison are the national mammal of the U.S. Why? Because of their connection to U.S. history. I'd like to point out how important buffalo are to Native American tribes.

So from the Black Hills in South Dakota to the Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma, there are a lot of Native American tribes, right? The Lakotas, the Blackfeet, the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, that's just to name a few. And as one Lakota, a former president of the Intertribal Buffalo Council once said, the buffalo is part of us. It's in our prayers.

our songs, our stories. Without it, we are not whole. Fred Dubre from the Lakota tribe said that. So to drive his point home, to emphasize the importance of buffalo in Native American life, it's important to realize that buffalo was their food. It was the hide and fur that allowed them to make clothing and shelter for

The bones of the buffalo were used for tools. Nothing was wasted. And the buffalo itself was looked upon for spiritual guidance. To many tribes, bison are considered sacred. They are a relative and the closest connection to nature and their ancestors. So during ceremonies, some tribes would sacrifice a bison to the sun.

Now, when the bison disappeared, it was traumatic. Imagine if the central part of your life disappeared, what provided food and clothing and shelter and tools and everything. I already mentioned that before railroads, there were about 30 to 60 million bison in North America. But by the late 1800s, that number dropped to below 1,000. Some sources say 500,000.

Others say as low as 300. Why did the bison start to disappear? Because the U.S. government decided to get rid of them. According to Frank Meyer, a U.S. Army officer at the time, either the buffalo or the Indian must go. If we kill the buffalo, we conquer the Indian.

So why did the U.S. government try to conquer the Indian? What was that about? We had a president named Ulysses S. Grant, who was in office from 1869 to 1877. And while he was in office, he encouraged the large-scale killing of bison as a strategy to weaken Native American tribes who depended on bison for food,

clothing, tools, and shelter. Now, he had the chance to protect the animals at one point, but he did not. He went through with their extermination plan. The belief was that it would be easier to settle in the West if the land was cleared.

not just of bison, but of the natives living there. By eliminating the bison, Native Americans would be forced into submission. Like either they could listen to the U.S. government or go hungry. Now, many of them did go hungry.

Missionaries from all over the U.S. visited the tribes during the winter famines of the late 1880s, and they described what they saw. A lot of natives were not only hungry, but they were forced to survive on government rations, which were not enough and often arrived rotten or late.

They described seeing children with bloated bellies, women with their eyes hollowed, and tribe members starving to death. In fact, 600 members of the Pagan tribe died during the winter famine from 1883 to 1884.

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Just to reiterate what was just talked about, the U.S. government policy eliminated the main source of food for Native American tribes, which then forced Natives to rely on the U.S. government. It forced them to cooperate with assimilation programs, which were designed to get rid of their Native language and their culture and essentially to remove food

the Indian part of them. It was to remove the native. We have an expression, beggars can't be choosers. The idea is that when you're desperate, you take what you're given, even if it is bad or not perfect. Beggars can't be choosers. The problem is the U.S. government put natives in a situation with no alternative. Imagine that.

It's a brutal chapter in American history, one that I was not so informed about, to be honest. I was not aware that many people were starving during these winter famines and that it wasn't just one year, it was multiple years. It's quite disturbing. Now, so you might be wondering, what happened to all the bison? They don't just disappear overnight.

Well, so hunters and settlers did the dirty work. They got their rifles and shot, sometimes entire herds. And many of them sold the hides, which is essentially like the skin of the animal, for money. But not always. It was okay to shoot bison from train cars for sport.

And so hunters would shoot from their train car window and then just leave the bison carcass to rot. So the meat just went to waste. Now, the point is, these hunters and settlers and like the government nearly wiped out the buffalo populations entirely.

According to Dan Flores, who is a historian, he said, "...there is no story anywhere in world history that involves a large destruction of wild animals, as happened in North America, in the western United States in particular, between 1800 and about 1890. It's the largest destruction of animal life discoverable in modern world history."

Now, there are some very disturbing pictures from that time. One taken of a man standing atop a two-story building of bison bones. A lot of the bones were eventually turned into fertilizer to help with crop growth. Some settlers actually got rich from collecting bison bones, even if they came from other people's properties. It was truly the Wild West.

It's estimated that 20 to 30 million bison were killed between 1820 and 1870, so before Grant was president. And then while he was president and up until around 1883, so after his presidency, the other 10 to 15 million bison were killed. As I said, they were nearly wiped off

so eliminated from the map or wiped off the map by overhunting. Thanks to conservation efforts, the bison made a comeback. They're now found in national parks like Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.

And of course, Yellowstone, which has one of the few herds that never experienced extinction. The bison there have ancestors that have been roaming the land for centuries. Today, about 500,000 bison are in the United States. Some are in private commercial herds, and others are in the wild, like in Yellowstone.

The thing is, they are extremely protected while they're in Yellowstone. And once they get off the Yellowstone property, they're considered a threat to nearby farming and livestock ranchers. And so every year, a number of buffalo who escape need to be harvested, which is a euphemism that means they need to be killed.

So I believe a few years ago, 2023, there were over a thousand buffalo that managed to get off Yellowstone property. And the pictures are very disturbing. But in short, when they're harvested, their meat is eaten. Native people oversee approximately 20,000 bison.

And they're not just surviving, they're actually thriving in some places. They help the grasslands regenerate and they return nutrients to the soil. So they are truly part of the ecosystem. Now it's time for five really fun facts that, yeah, I just wanted to know more about. And I think you should know about. So number one, Buffalo Bill Cody.

So, I've heard this name since I was a little kid. My dad was really into westerns, and I don't know, it just came up in conversation every now and then. Buffalo Bill Cody is the reason why the rest of the U.S. and the world learned about the Wild West. He used to claim that he killed 4,000 buffalo in just 18 months.

And to be clear, it wasn't part of the government program we talked about today. He actually killed the buffalo to feed railroad workers in Kansas. In his Wild West shows, he'd actually bring in buffalo, Native American performers, and vaqueros to show what life was like on the plains.

And he was really the first person to make money off of his experience. A lot of people hadn't been to the Plains or the West and had just heard about what it was like. Millions paid for his show in Staten Island and elsewhere. And in his shows, he glorified his actions. He would save families from Native Americans or save a family whose house was being robbed.

Buffalo Bill Cody became wildly famous, even in Europe. Some say he was the most famous American of his time. In fact, while he was in England, and I find this kind of funny, he bragged to the Prince of Wales about getting a royal flush, not in poker, but in real life.

Four kings, one prince, and various other royalty showed up to the stadium on one night to see him perform. At the time, the Queen of England, Victoria, raved about the show after her golden jubilee. He also performed in 1889 when the Eiffel Tower was revealed in Paris. Millions saw him.

Now, think of this show like the OG of medieval times. But instead of the knights in armor, there were cowboys and Indians, battle reenactments, and more. So according to the PBS documentary, The American Buffalo, he was so well marketed, his efforts helped fuel the conservation plan for bison.

to protect them, to save them, which Teddy Roosevelt was part of. He's one of our great presidents from the past who was all about nature and the environment. Along with Ernest Thompson Setton, he co-founded the American Bison Society of 1905, and they helped

create breeding programs, and protected the herds that were still alive. For example, the U.S. Army worked in Yellowstone to make sure it was protected from poachers. So a poacher is someone who shoots animals and they're not allowed to be shooting the animals. That is a poacher. He also made sure that the herds were not overhunted, helped protect the habitat,

And of course, dealt with all the legislation and funding for the protection of the bison. It's now considered one of the most successful conservation projects in history.

Which brings me back to Buffalo Bill Cody. It's interesting that his efforts went on to help protect the bison or the buffalo because he spent the early part of his career boasting or bragging that he had killed 4,000 in just 18 months.

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Is buffalo mozzarella really made from buffalo? Yeah, but not from bison. And this is where we have to really distinguish. In southern Italy, there are farms where buffalo mozzarella is made. It's fresh. It's great in a caprese salad or caprese. I don't know how you are supposed to pronounce it.

And yeah, so there's tomato, mozzarella, and basil, balsamic, it's delicious. I asked AI out of curiosity, can you make mozzarella from bison milk? And you know how AI always tries to make you feel good for asking a question. It actually was not very nice in its responses.

It was kind of gave me the vibe of like, Shauna, that's a ridiculous question. No, there'll only be a quart of liquid once you're done milking it. And it's not worth it in the first place because they're moody and they'll probably run away. So I don't think it's a good idea to get mozzarella from bison, but buffalo, yes. Number three, do people eat bison?

Absolutely. Over the past 20 years, their meat has been reintroduced to natives in the plains, which they're very proud of. I watched a video about the reintroduction of bison meat into some of these tribes, and it feels like

They're recapturing their culture, the central part of their culture that they sort of lost when the bison disappeared. And with it came back songs and traditions. And it's a very big deal that people are now eating bison there again.

Apart from that area, though, I can speak from personal experience that bison burgers are a thing, and not just at roadside diners in Wyoming. You can actually find them in a lot of high-quality burger joints and also at health food stores.

Now, it seems a little weird to speak about eating bison after talking about the creature and how special it is and how it was almost extinct, but I digress. I haven't personally eaten bison burger before, although I've seen it many times on restaurant menus, but people really love them.

Now, when I researched why people like bison burgers so much, the answer was, well, they're leaner than beef, not gamey, packed with protein, plus they've got more iron and omega-3s than your average burger. Now, many people claim that they taste better than regular burgers made of beef because they're slightly sweet and rich.

Now, some people also say that it's more humane to eat bison because they are naturally free-ranging. Is that a verb? Naturally roaming free in the fields and they eat green grass. So in that respect, they're more humane than a typical cattle farm where there's limited space and, you know, maybe getting cattle feed made of corn.

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's true that it's more humane or not. You got to do your research. But that is what my research told me. And that brings me to point number four. Does buffalo chicken have anything to do with buffaloes? Do you know what buffalo chicken is? It's a popular appetizer in the U.S. that people usually have the first time and go, oh, wow.

Wow, that's great. It's basically chicken wings or drumsticks that are marinated in Frank's Red Hot sauce. So the result is like vinegary and spicy. And these chicken wings and things are served with celery and blue cheese dressing.

So it's kind of an odd mixture, but they actually don't have anything to do with the animal buffalo. They were just invented in Buffalo, New York. Number five, bison on Catalina Island. So I grew up in California, and when I heard that there are bison on Catalina Island, which is off the coast of Southern California, I was like, what?

How? That's so weird. And here's how. So, Hollywood is just a hop, skip, and a jump from Catalina. In other words, the distance isn't very far. And back in 1924, a Hollywood film crew brought 14 bison to the island for a movie.

And when the movie wrapped up, the crew left, but they didn't bring the bison back. They just stayed there. And because there are no predators out in that area, there was plenty of space, they flourished. Over time, more and more bison were born, and the herd grew to over 600.

Now, the problem is Catalina isn't built for 600 bison. These guys can get up to like 10, 11, 12 feet long. They started overgrazing and they started changing the island's ecosystem. So the Catalina Conservancy had to step in. And rather than killing them off, they tried a bunch of different methods to get rid of them.

They shipped bison off the island. They introduced birth control. Bison birth control is now a thing. And managed the population, which I'm not sure if that's another way to say harvesting, which once again is a euphemism for killing.

As of now, there are about 80 bison left on Catalina. Scientists estimate that the herd might disappear entirely by the 2050s. Let's see. I just think it's pretty wild that if you go to an island off the coast of California, you might see bison. So the next time you see bison, whether you're in a state park or you see it printed on a souvenir,

Just remember their story, their importance in Native cultures, and how the U.S. government pushed for their elimination, for their slaughter.

And that led, of course, to their near extinction, to the point they became our national mammal. And yeah, their comeback is considered a success for conservation efforts, but it's led to another controversial issue. How many of the millions of bison should return? Should the natives get to choose? What do you think?

They're out in the Great Plains. They're out in Catalina Island. Some consider them sacred. Others might think they're just great with an order of fries on the side. The point is, it looks like the American bison, or buffalo, are here to stay.

I hope you enjoyed that episode. Once again, if you're interested in the transcript that goes along with it so you can read along and look at all of the challenging words, their definitions, get a quiz and flashcards to practice the new vocabulary, be sure to sign up to season four. You'll find the link in the episode notes. Thanks and enjoy the rest of your day. Bye.

Thanks and hope to see you soon.

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