Buffalo Robes On The Hoof

As a child I learned buffalo was a word that started with the letter "B" and that buffalo were animals that roamed through the Indian country way out in the west. I neither doubted nor questioned. If I had seen one in a zoo I probably would have remarked that it was big and that would have closed the subject. But now that I live in southeastern Arizona and only a few miles from Fort Huachuca, it is possible for me to buzz up to the Fort in my car and drive to within a few feet of where herds of wild buffalo are grazing. And if I so desire I can get out and walk to within picture taking distance. Of course when I do this they usually turn away from me and I get a tail-end view. Now don't think for one minute that these animals are in an enclosure and that I poke my camera through a rail or wire fence. No, we're all in these mountains together come what may. Just the brilliant sky for our roof and the boundaries so far as can be seen the natural ones of trees and mountains.

It was on one of these trips when Mr. Ralph Morrow, the Game Range Supervisor, had invited a few of us to go with him to the section of the Fort where the buffalo are most likely to be found. After driving for a few miles through the gently rolling hills, he stopped. His keen eyes scanned the landscape for a few minutes, then he said, "There they are, over there," and pointed to the lower slopes of the mountains.

"Aren't those just bushes?" I asked. "Well, I've never yet seen bushes walk," was his dry comment. Sure enough, I looked again, and the bushes were moving in a single file weaving slowly between the rocks and oak trees.

Starting the motor, Mr. Morrow remarked, "We'll go over closer." Of course I thought that we'd sit in the car and wait for awhile. He had told us that often, if you'd keep real quiet, the buffalo would get curious and come close. Driving into a side road we found that sitting was not his intention at all as he stopped the car and asked us to get out. Motioning to us he said, "You go over there to the left under that big tree and my wife and I will circle in back of the buffalo and try to drive them towards you so that you can get a picture at close range." That was when I discovered that I was not properly shod for an expedition that meant walking over rough ground so I sat back in the car, somewhat disgrunted, and watched my friends walk nonchalantly toward the herd with nothing more for protection than a camera. Shortly after this the buffalo, like so many animals and people, decided to do the unexpected and came in my direction rather than where they were supposed to go.

You can imagine my consternation and if you'll pardon my candor, by horror, when I saw thundering toward me, not one buffalo, but what looked like 1,000. (I found out later that there were only 76!) Their massive heads were down, their tails waving briskly in the air, and their hoofs throwing up clods of dirt. I never dreamed that a person could think of so many things in so short a time as I did while thosebeasts, none of them weighing less than a thousand pounds and the bulls probably tipping the scales at around 17,000 pounds, were galloping towards me. My thoughts sped by with jetlike speed. "Mr. Morrow-told-you-that-they-wouldn'tattack-a-car." "Yes," I answered myself, "but-how-do-I-knowthat-they-can-even-see-the-car. They're coming fast and their heads are down. By the time they see me it's going to be too late. And the book says that when a buffalo comes at you with its head down and its tail up, you'd better plan to be some other place and quick." My inner voices raced on while I sat petrified. "It wouldn't be sporting to leave the folks without a car. Oh, Gee! I can't sit here with those things getting closer and closer and heading directly for me. What'll I do? I know! I'm going! I can't stand this and they're almost here. Find the starter-the brake! Step on the gas! I'm moving! Wonder what the folks think to see me leaving. Well, I don't care, I'm not going to sit here and be ground to bits." The car jumped forward up the rough road. But looking in the rear vision mirror I saw that the buffalo had turned just before they had gotten to the spot where the car had so recently been parked. What a relief! as I saw them sweep past without a look in my direction. My family and friends looked rather disgusted but nothing was said when they reached the car. Later that same day we did manage to get within fifty feet of this same herd and the photographers got their pictures.

During our trip and while we were waiting for conditions to be just right for picture taking, Ralph Morrow gave us a good bit of information concerning the Fort, the history of buffalos and the reason for bringing some of them to this scenic spot in Arizona.

It is only recently that these Huachuca Mountain slopes have been inhabited by buffalo. It was in 1877 that Camp Huachuca came into being. Located high on the northern slope of the mountains, the soldiers had a wonderful vantage point from which to watch the Apache signal fires in the Dragoon Mountains far to the east. Later, it was the black smoke of the railroads that they watched as the trains crept slowly across the barren desert wastes bringing with them the civilization that was so much needed in this new land. In 1881, a permanent fort was established but unlike so many of our old army posts throughout the nation, it has not been allowed to fall into ruin, and was used during both World Wars I and II as a training center for colored troops. Approximately 30,000 individuals were housed here including soldiers and civilians during the last war.

Many famous people have been stationed at Fort Huachuca including one of the greatest generals of our time, John J. Pershing, who came here as a young Lieutenant. And at one time the band music, which is so much a part of military life was under the direction of the father of Fiorello La Guardia.

The grounds of this historic fort comprise 76,000 acres of the most beautiful country in southern Arizona. But in March, 1949, the Fort including 12,000 acres was transferred to the State of Arizona to be used as a base for the National Guard. At the same time about 35,000 acres were alloted to the Arizona Game and Fish Commission. This section, partially grazing land and partly mountainous, is to be a permanent game area for the buffalo that are being brought here for scientific study and research in handling on range land not being disturbed by livestock. Six hundred buffalo will be the carrying capacity of the range, the idea being that with a smaller number, there will always be a surplus of feed even in years of drought.

According to the number of tourists streaming through the gates of the Fort, all of them with the avowed intention of seeing the buffalo, it won't be too long until this becomes one of the attractions of the West. During the past ninety days one hundred cars from thirty-two states checked in at the gate.

Ralph Morrow is a man whose personality, voice and actions all inspire confidence, not only in the humans with whom he deals, but also among the wild animals. He has studied and worked among the buffalo so long that I firmly believe he understands their language or else he uses a sign language, as the beasts usually do just what he intends them to. So, because of this knowledge, it is he who is called upon when these animals are to be moved from one grazing place to another.

So Mr. Morrow went in 1949 to House Rock Valley in northern Arizona and trucked back 114 heifers and cows and three large bulls. House Rock Valley is a desert basin fifty miles by forty miles with natural barriers making it a good buffalo range. It was here that Theodore Roosevelt maintained a hunting cabin and it was he who financed the driving of the first buffalo herd into House Rock Valley in a desperate attempt to build up the herd that had been started by two men by the name of Owens and Buffalo Jones. It was with Buffalo Jones that Teddy used to slip away from the arduous duties of state and go lion hunting.

These animals which we have been calling buffalo are in reality the American Bison and are a larger animal than its European relative and is darker in color.The massive development of the head and forequarters compared with the hinder part is what distinguishes them from the other members of the cattle tribe. The great growth of shaggy hair on the head with its huge shaggy beard is a familiar sight to every American who has seen it on the buffalo nickel. This shaggy hair is also on the neck and shoulders while the hindquarters and lower part of the back and sides remain smooth. The horns are set low down on the side of the head and are comparatively small and curved while the muzzle is short and blunt.

The coat of the bison is at its best in November and December. By March it has become weatherbeaten and shabby, and shedding begins. For the next three months the old coat hangs in rags, and the animal presents a most dilapidated appearance. It is at this time that they are plagued by mosquitoes, ticks and prickly grasses. Therefore they are constantly scratching against trees and boulders and wallowing in the mud if there is any to be found. The topography of the West was greatly changed by these habits; buffalo wallows became deep, smooth saucers in the earth while rocks and boulders were worn smooth by the constant scratching of the herds. Many trees that were in their path were killed by having their bark worn off and the first telegraph poles erected were knocked down by the constant scratching of the itching beasts.

Among the millions of individual buffalos a few years ago, the hide or "robe" as it was termed, exhibited many color varieties. There were black, blue, beaver, buckskin, and white. Roman Nose, the great Cheyenne chief, had a magnificent pure white robe, which he called his "great medicine," and which he was wearing when he fell before Forsyth's troops.

It has been pretty well established that the bison is polygamous, the breeding season being from June to September and the gestation period is the same as for cattle. The cows do not breed until their third year and have been known to breed until about twenty-five years of age. The average time is from four to fifteen years. Their life span is fifteen years with some having been known to live for thirty-five years.

During the mating season the males and females live together in respectable domesticity but in the fall they divide for a time into separate herds.

At birth the calves weigh approximately fifty pounds and are light brown or yellow in color, assuming the dark brown of the adult in their second year. They are able to drink water immediately and can graze in about five days. Seeing the calves grazing you might be fooled into thinking that they were some strange kind of cattle, for the hump does not appear until they are yearlings.

The buffalo is a solicitous parent. In the olden days when danger threatened, the males formed a ring with lowered heads to guard against wolves and other aggressors and have been known to travel for miles in this formation until the young could be gotten to a place of safety.

The male bison packs around a weight of about two thousand pounds but his lady friend manages to keep her weight down to about half that amount. Both sexes are equipped with horns, which are never shed. The youngsters are born with straight horns that assume a curvature as they grow older. These horns come in handy when the bulls are fighting among themselves for leadership in the herd although buffalo have a wrestling technique that rarely results in fatalities. Other animals had better look out as it is no trick at all for the bison to give a powerful downward thrust, then throw his enemy high in the air.

And don't think that because these seem to be heavy plodding creatures that they can't run. They have been known to tire out three sets of horses and run nearly forty miles in a single day. This remarkable endurance comes from the fact that they have exceptionally large hearts and lungs.

These buffalo at Fort Huachuca seemingly have no desire to wander, but in their wild days they were forever moving either south or north according to the season in search of better grazing. Moving in single file sometimes there would be an army of thousands. The trails thus formed usually followed the shortest and easiest route. In fact engineers frequently used buffalo trails as guides in building the early railroads.

In those early days large numbers of bison were killed by prairie fires, quicksands and thin ice on the rivers. Immense herds stampeded and the animals would trample one another or anything that stood in their path. If the leaders tried to stop before quicksands or other hazards the momentum of the herd driving on behind frequently knocked them down to provide a living bridge for the remainder.

"The roaring and rushing sound one of these vast herds make crossing a river may sometimes in a still night be heard for miles," wrote Washington Irving.

One of the most dangerous sports was hunting buffalo as they were liable to stampede in the direction of the hunter. Experienced hunters knew enough to pick off the leader of the herd, for a leaderless herd stopped dead until another leader stepped out of the ranks. Then the hunter would pick off the new leader, and so on down the line.

The buffalo had numbers of enemies but he also had one little companion-the cowbird or buffalo bird. "Sometimes the cowbirds walk sedately behind their grazing monster; sometimes they flit over, snapping at flies; often they sit along the ridgepole of his spine."

In the herd at Silver Heights, near Winnipeg, in the winter of 1900-01 one of these cowbirds remained with the biggest bull in the herd. The buffalo's food was its food and by day it flitted near, or becoming tired, warmed its toes in the wool of the animal's back. At night it made its bed in a hollow of wool just behind the horns.

Early in the sixteenth century, Cortez visited the zoo at Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, and he described the animal he saw there as "a rare Mexican bull with a hump like a camel's and hair like a lion's." This was the first description of our buffalo, or bison, by a white man. It is estimated that on our own plains of North America then there were approximately fifty million of these "rare Mexican bulls."

They were the main source of food and clothing for the native tribes of the prairie regions and although the great prairies were the bison's natural home, the original range started almost as far east as the Atlantic coast. They roamed through the forested regions, across mountains to the Mississippi, then to Texas and Northern Mexico, over the Rocky Mountains to Utah and Idaho. Westward they spread to Canada, through Alberta and British Columbia to the bleak shores of the great Slave Lake.

Europeans, too, were familiar with the bison. Poles hunted them extensively late in the 17th century. During the first World War the bison were slaughtered for food and at the close of the war they had been nearly exterminated, with the exception of a few small herds that had been preserved in the Lithuanian forests by the former Russian Government.

Buffaloes are found in Africa ranging from the Cape to the equator. A small species is found in West Africa and an entirely different variety lives in the Congo region. The Indian buffalo has been domesticated and introduced throughout Burma and Malay, as well as in Turkey, Egypt and Italy.

For unknown ages the Indians had lived on the bison, then with the coming of the white men, their doom was sealed. He not only hunted the bison himself but furnished firearms to the Indians. This slaughter started about 1730 and continued until the animals were driven away from the eastern section of the United States and from the country west of the Rocky Mountains. From 1839 the spread of civilizatión and the demand for buffalo-robes increased.

Thousands of animals were killed for meat, hides and pure wanton sport. The completion of the Union Pacific cut the huge buffalo herd in two and from then on the slaughter was ruthless. Even canned buffalo tongues found a ready market. The southern herd was totally exterminated and by 1895 only 800 of the northern herd remained.

Some 300 or 400 settled in Yellowstone National Park, where they were protected by the United States Government. A larger remnant survived in Canada, some of which are preserved in Banff National Park, while a still greater purely wild herd exists in the uninhabited wastes of the northwest.

Occasionally bison have been crossed with domestic cattle, the resulting hybrid, called cattalo.

With a start I came back from the past, realizing that Ralph Morrow had finished with his fascinating story and was pointing to the watering trough by the side of the road, where a little calf was sniffing around the edges. The trough was so high that he couldn't reach the water. He seemed to think it over, then after a little more investigation he very calmly stood up on his hind legs and hooking his front legs over the top of the trough proceeded to satisfy his thirst.

On the way back to Mr. Morrow's house I asked him what would happen when the herd numbered more than the alloted six hundred. His reply startled me. "Well," he said, "after that number is reached they will be killed off and if you have any friends who would like to pick out their buffalo robe on the hoof, are good shots and who have a hunting license in this state, tell them that when the time arrives they will be allowed to draw for the lucky numbers entitling them to kill one buffalo. The lucky person will be given the head and hide and one-half of the carcass. You might tell them, too, that if they desire something more sporting than this they can actually own their own herd of buffalo. The only requirements is a fee of $10.00 a year and ownership of sufficient grazing land. It would be quite a novelty, now wouldn't it, to invite your guests from the East to pick out their buffalo robe as it gallops across your front yard."