The American Buffalo

George Bird Grinnell was a student of Lucy Audubon, the widow of the famous ornithologist and painter. She taught him how to observe and appreciate the natural world. More importantly, Lucy taught him to think about future generations and how they might live one day. Grinnell put Lucy’s lessons to work, fighting against the destruction of birds and other wildlife, including the buffalo.

By 1889, Buffalo Bill Cody was the most famous American in the world. “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” show promised “a year’s visit West in three hours,” complete with a stampede of buffalo – and the urban crowds couldn’t get enough of it. The show played an instrumental role in building a following in the country to save the buffalo from extinction.

The 1913 Buffalo Nickel raises important questions about the romanticization of the American West. Bison were brought back from the brink of extinction. Today conservation work continues in concert with the people whose lives have been intertwined with the buffalo for over 10,000 years. At least 80 tribes in 20 states control their own herds on nearly a million acres of tribal land.

U.S. concern over a new Ghost Dance ceremony prompted the arrest of the Lakota Chief Sitting Bull. Dozens ended up dead, including Sitting Bull. Several hundred Lakotas headed toward the Black Hills to end things peaceably with the U.S. Army. En route, they camped at a creek called Wounded Knee. The next morning, more than 250 Lakotas – mostly women and children – were killed by U.S. soldiers.

After the Civil War, Americans set out with renewed energy to unite the East and West. They built railroads to span the continent, opening up vast areas for homesteaders and connecting distant metropolitan markets to domestic crops and cattle. The effect on the environment, the bison, and the Plains Indians was catastrophic.

The U.S. government made treaties with Indigenous people when it was convenient, and broke these treaties when it was inconvenient. This recurring pattern made it increasingly difficult for Native people to live – and survive – as they once had.

Did you know a buffalo can clear a six-foot fence? Or hit running speeds of 35 miles per hour? These animals may look strange and slow, but they’re "a souped-up hotrod of an animal hiding in a minivan shell." They were also driven nearly to extinction – but that’s only the beginning.

The scale of destruction of wild animals in the American West during the 19th century is the largest in known human history. When hide hunters ran out of buffalo, they turned to other animals to feed the market economy, from antelopes and elk to wolves and grizzly bears. Even scavenging animals could not escape the destruction.

The American Buffalo, a new two-part, four-hour series, takes viewers on a journey through more than 10,000 years of North American history and across some of the continent’s most iconic landscapes, tracing the animal’s evolution, significance to the Great Plains, near demise, and relationship to the Indigenous People of North America.

Ken Burns, Julie Dunfey and Dayton Duncan give us a behind-the-scenes look at the production of The American Buffalo. The film is biography of an animal, but also a window into a broader American history.