Where the Buffalo Roam

Meet Dakota Miracle (left) and Dakota Legend, both are true albino buffalo.

We're in the bread basket of America – Bismarck, North Dakota. You drive across the prairie – traveling in an ocean of corn, wheat, and sunflowers. There's something special about a billion sunflowers lined up to the horizon, all of them facing the rising sun like little soldiers awaiting orders for the day.

We have stopped at A Prairie Breeze Campground and the temperature is 98 degrees. We long ago left the rolling hills of Montana and came on Monday to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, North Dakota. It's a small national park, with a beautiful campground ($5) and we enjoyed the experience of being surrounded by a herd of 350 adult buffalo and a similar number of calves. On the road into the park, we passed numerous prairie dog towns. These are communities, identified by humps of burrowed out dirt, where the prairie dogs spend their days worrying about being picked off by coyotes or owls, or other wild life.

They usually sit at the highest point of their individual mounds, always keeping an eye open for danger. They set up a chatter when your stop to photograph them and, if they feel threatened, they make a dive for their burrows. They're very similar to meercats.

The buffalo just browse and wander at will. President Teddy Roosevelt lived in the western part of North Dakota (known as The Badlands) back at the end of the 19th century. He was a cattleman and had two farms.

We learned his neighbor was a Marquis de Mores who considered himself a great buffalo hunter. During the winter of 1881-82 this fellow reportedly killed more than 5,000 buffalo in southeast Montana. There must be a special place in hell for this kind of wanton killer. In his memoirs, later in life, he had the decency to write he wished his “aim had not been so good.”

While lingering a moment on this wanton destruction, I learned more about the train trips to kill buffalo. Back in the 1880s, people were invited on these excursions to shoot the buffalo from the train windows. The object was to kill the buffalo for their tongues. That was all that was taken from the dead animals which were left to rot on the prairie. More than three millions buffalo were slaughtered in this way in a single year.

Jo and I attended an evening lecture and slide presentation by a park ranger who spoke about Roosevelt's dynamism and how he overcame huge odds – he was so asthmatic as a child that he could not attend school. His wife and mother died within days of each other of typhoid (mom) and a condition developed at childbirth (his wife). But his sister, after a year, connected him to an equally dynamic woman and he quickly married her and produced five more children.

He was a maverick politically and the Republican Party never did take to him. They thought, stupidly, that they should tuck him away as a vice president to McKinley. McKinley won the election, then promptly was assassinated so Teddy took over the reigns.

He was presented with a brown bear cub by an admirer but he asked that the cub be released. This got some press and a woman made a stuffed bear which she sent to him, asking if he would permit her to make these bears and call them “Teddy” Bears in his honor. He gave the go-ahead and that's how we now have a teddy bear culture.

We struggle with the dichotomy of Roosevelt being a great conservationist and, at the same time, a great white hunter who made numerous trips to Africa and shot elephant, rhino, cape buffalo and many other creatures. Many of these were stuffed and now are displayed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

On our way back to the RV, we walked through the campground and passed a cluster of campers who pointed a flashlight to the ground. There was a sizable rattle snake, coiled, rattling and really angry about being disturbed. Jo and I later sat outside in the rich darkness at our site and watched the milky way, along with the space station and other assorted heavenly bodies passing overhead.

Thursday, Aug. 12
We stopped along the highway to visit the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, North Dakota. This is the home of the legendary white buffalo, White Cloud, born on July 10, 1996 on a private farm in Michigan, ND. She has been certified a true albino buffalo and is revered as a sacred animal by the Lakota native Americans.

White Cloud gave birth to her first calf, Princess Winona, in July 2000. It was brown; she had three more brown calves through the years. On August. 31, 2007, White Cloud gave birth to her fifth calf, an albino! This calf, a bull, was named Dakota Miracle. The herd at the museum truly became legendary on May 31, 2009, when a third white calf was born to one of the herd's brown buffalo.

Unfortunately, it was raining and blowing a gale when we stopped by the museum. We were able to enjoy the exhibits – but the sacred buffalo were hiding down in the hollows and washes. They all are allowed to roam freely so we were unable to visit with these remarkable creatures.

It was a superb opportunity, however, to learn more about the traditions of the Lakota peoples. We learned, for example about White Buffalo Calf Woman. She came to the Lakota people a very long time ago. She met with two Lakota scouts and appeared out of a white cloud on a sunny day. When she stepped out of the cloud they saw she was the most beautiful women they had ever seen.

Then one of the scouts, being foolish, had bad thoughts and spoke them. But the other said, “That is a sacred woman; throw all bad thoughts away.” When she came still closer, they saw she wore a fine white buckskin dress, that her hair was very long and that she was young and very beautiful. And she knew their thoughts and said in a voice that was like singing: “You shall go home and tell your people that I am coming and that a big tipi shall be built for me in the center of the nation.” The braves did as they were told and the people built the tipi and she came in four days.

As she came into the village, there came from her mouth a white cloud that was good to smell. Then she gave something to the chief. It was a pipe with a bison calf carved on one side – to mean the earth that bears and feeds us, with 12 eagle feathers hanging from the stem – to mean the sky and 12 moons. These were tied with grass that never breaks.

“Behold,” she said. “With this pipe, you will be bound to all your relatives. Nothing but good shall come of it. Only the hands of the good shall take care of it and the bad shall not even see it.”

The woman stayed with the people four days and nights. During this time, she showed them how to prepare the pipe.... then she showed the men how to smoke it. Thus the pipe came to our people.

The sacred woman then took her leave, saying, “Always remember how sacred the pipe is, and treat it as such. I am leaving now but I shall look back upon the people,” and she promised to return in time of need.

She walked in the direction of the setting sun, and then she stopped and rolled over four times. The first time, she got up and became a black buffalo, the second time a brown buffalo, the third time a red buffalo, and the fourth time she rolled over she became a white buffalo. This buffalo walked on further, stopped, and after bowing to each of the four directions of the universe, disappeared over the hill.

This story has been passed down by the Lakota (Sioux) Elders.