above: Custom beaded and painted bison skull decorated by Sharon Holton (Cherokee), clay pigment, paints, deer skin and crushed turquoise. Courtesy Native Arts Trading.

By Win Blevins

In the summer of 1994, on the Heider farm in Wisconsin, a white buffalo calf came into the world. Because Plains Indian people revere white buffalo, the Heider family named their heifer Miracle. Native people came to see Miracle and rejoiced. No pure white calf had been born since 1933. Some saw in her an omen that White Buffalo Woman herself would soon return. Others saw a portent that the prayer of the Lakota Ghost Dance of the 1880s was about to be answered—that the buffalo would return to the Great Plains.

 Now signs abound that the latter promise is being realized. Almost extinct a century ago, buffalo are making a remarkable comeback. Nearly a quarter million graze today on private ranches, most of them on the Great Plains, and 200,000 more in Canada. Public lands such as national parks are home to about another 25,000. Dave Carter, executive director of the National Bison Association, the advocacy group for commercial growers, says, “The market for buffalo is strong. Meat sales are up. We need more people producing buffalo.”
Since about the time Miracle was born, American Indian tribes have also been exerting their own muscle to bring the buffalo back. Their motives run less to profit and more to the physical, emotional and spiritual health of their people.

The Great Decline
Buffalo have made this continent their home for several hundred thousand years, and two of the original six species are still with us. Once they ranged over all of North America, but they thrived particularly on the Great Plains. The Native people there held them sacred. Buffalo are part of the Lakota (Sioux) creation story, in which the people followed Buffalo out of Wind Cave into this world. Many tribes held ceremonies to honor the buffalo.

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