Buffalo: Exploring the legacy

Generally when we think of American bison, images of vast herds on the Great Plains and nomadic Indians and buffalo hunters of a century-and-a-half ago come to mind - impressions fostered by historic paintings, dime novels and Hollywood movies.

But further back in time, say 400 years ago, "pretty much all of Utah was bison range" as well, says Kathy Kankainen, collections manager for the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah."Buffalo: Exploring the Legacy," an exhibit originated by the University of Wyoming Art Museum, has been imported by the U. and modified in part to point out the role the great beasts played in what was to become the Beehive State. The collection also emphasizes the animal's importance to many Native American peoples.

Despite the project's title and the perceived interchangeability of the terms, Kankainen said, a bison is not a buffalo. Technically, a buffalo is an ox of Asia and Africa, like the water buffalo and Cape buffalo.

"My idea is that we should get people in here and educate them," she said - as well as fascinate them.

The Utah links are intriguing.

- Two of three bison-leather shields found near today's Capitol Reef National Park are on display. Radiocarbon-dated to around the year 1500, these are "the oldest known leather shields in North America," Kankainen said. They were constructed apparently to protect warriors on foot and do not have an obvious tribe affiliation, she said.

One shield is decorated with orderly patterns of uncolored circles, bigger than silver dollars, on lines of red, green and black pigment. Another has been tinted predominantly red, with a pie-shaped wedge at its top filled in with green lines.

When found by Ephraim Portman in 1925, the shields were bundled in cedar bark, "as if someone had left them there but intended to come back," Kankainen said. "These are a real mystery."

- Before mountain men, explorers and pioneers arrived in the 1800s, bison had vanished from most of Utah's valleys. But evidence - in particular a kill site, or buffalo jump, near Woodruff - points to their having been here in notable numbers, especially north of the Great Salt Lake and east of the Wasatch Range toward Wyoming.

The jump - a cliff face and ravine - was excavated in the 1960s by University of Utah scientists who found evidence of 85 bison, said Duncan Metcalfe, the museum's curator of North American archaeology. Only 25 percent of the site was examined, so researchers extrapolate that the count could be as high as 340 animals killed there.