All language subtitles for The.American.Buffalo.S01E02.720p.WEBRip.x264[eztv.re]

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Gentlemen, why in
heaven's name this haste?

You have time enough.

Why sacrifice the
present to the future,

fancying that you
will be happier when

your fields teem with wealth
and your cities with people?

In Europe we have cities
wealthier and more populous

than yours and we are not happy.

You dream of your posterity;
but your posterity will

look back to yours
as the golden age,

and envy those who
first burst into this

silent, splendid Nature,

who first lifted up their
axes upon these tall trees

and lined these waters
with busy wharves.

Why, then, seek to
complete in a few decades

what took the other nations of
the world thousands of years?

Why, in your hurry to
subdue and utilize Nature,

squander her splendid gifts?

You have opportunities such as
mankind has never had before,

and may never have again.

Lord James Bryce.

The first time I
met a buffalo, I looked into his eyes,

and it was like looking into the
past and the future at the same time.

Because I really do
think that they have seen

the whole tragedy that has
played out on the Great Plains.

I think that one of
the ways they survive,

and have survived for
hundreds of thousands of years,

is they turn into the wind

and they move through the storm

rather than being
chased by the storm.

They say, in a bad storm,

he has to turn
and face that storm

or else things won't
be good for him.

I heard that, that
saying, but as I start

looking at them, then it...
that saying made sense to me.

Like, you're right. If
you don't face the day,

you don't face the storm,
there could be problems.

The creature of
the American West was the bison.

The minute you see
one, you understand it.

Their sheer magnificence.

Their confidence;
they're unafraid.

They're massive, but they
can run 35 miles per hour.

And, somehow, they're
the symbol of America,

with a capital "A."

And to think that our
Indian policy and our greed

and our industrialization
would just blink this thing out

and we would just say, "Well,
that was then and this is now."

That seems like a
repudiation, somehow,

of the very idea of America.

We are the most
dangerous species of life on the planet,

and every other species,
even the Earth itself,

has cause to fear our
power to exterminate.

But we are also the
only species which,

when it chooses to do
so, will go to great effort

to save what it might destroy.

Wallace Stegner.

By the early 1880s,

the buffalo that had once
teemed across the Great Plains

by the tens of millions
had been reduced to

fewer than 1,000, scattered
in small, isolated herds...

Victims of a decades-long
frenzy of slaughter

that stripped
them of their hides

and left their carcasses
to rot in the sun.

Most people believed
the continent's

most magnificent creature
was about to disappear forever.

During the same time,
Native Americans had been

dispossessed of most
of their homelands,

confined to reservations,
and deprived of an animal

that had fed their bodies
and nourished their spirits

for untold generations.

Some thought the
Indians, too, had become

what they called
a "vanishing race."

But as the nineteenth
century ended,

an unlikely group of Americans
would begin to try, somehow,

to pull the buffalo
back from the brink.

And the road back begins in

all these little
different places,

with these different characters,

with their own reasons.

Some of them actually odious.

It's unorganized at
first, and, then, slowly,

it finally has to gain
enough momentum

that the, those individual
efforts can coalesce

and become something that
might save the national mammal

from just becoming a memory.

The early history of the
modern conservation movement

is full of people who did

the right thing for
the wrong reasons.

Many of the people who
wanted to save the bison

were motivated by reasons
that were all wrapped up

with nationalism, with racism,

and their own ideas
about who they were

and what the nation should be...

and then there were people
who genuinely loved these species

and wanted to see them survive.

There were a
lot of things contributing

to the near extinction
of that bison.

But what that also
means is that many things

had to contribute to the preservation
of the bison from extinction.

We can say that were
it not for these people,

with their particular
motivations,

the bison might well
have gone extinct.

An ambitious
taxidermist in the nation's capital,

who initially hoped to kill
some of the remaining buffaloes

for preservation as
museum exhibits,

would join forces with
an earnest New Englander

whose personal passion for
bison would grow into a campaign

for a national movement
to protect them.

A former hide hunter
would switch from

shooting bison to breeding them;

and a flamboyant
former cavalry scout,

who had once killed
thousands of buffalo,

would begin saving them...

And then bring them to the world

in performances
that thrilled millions.

The wife of a Texas cattleman
and former Indian fighter

would persuade her
hard-bitten husband

to take pity on
some buffalo calves.

It would eventually lead him
to reconsider his relationship

with the animals and the
people he had once despised.

On two different
Indian reservations...

One in South Dakota, the
other in western Montana...

Families would start small herds

that would become
the largest in the nation.

A patrician New York
magazine publisher,

whose experiences in the
West had turned him into

a crusading conservationist,

would befriend an
energetic, impetuous hunter...

And convert him to the cause,

which he would take with him
all the way to the White House.

And a Comanche leader,
who had once waged war

against the hide hunters,

would become a man of peace...

And live to see the buffalo
return to his homeland.

I know there is such

strength and resilience

to where this is not
just a story of tragedy;

this is a story of persevering
and continuing on.

Helping to bring
these buffalo back.

In the fall of
1883, a young politician,

the eldest son of a prominent
New York City family,

became alarmed by reports
that the vast herds of buffalo

were quickly disappearing
from the Great Plains.

So, he hurried west on
the Northern Pacific Railroad

and got off when he reached
the Little Missouri River

in the heart of the
Badlands in Dakota Territory.

He was 24 years old, and
he feared that the bison

would all be gone before he
got the chance to shoot one.

His name was Theodore Roosevelt.

He hires a
local guide, Joe Ferris,

who's very reluctant to
take this New York "dude"

out buffalo hunting.

For one thing,
there are no buffalo.

And he keeps
saying to Roosevelt,

"This... you're not going
to probably find one."

And it's raining
and chilly and cold,

and everything goes wrong.

Roosevelt falls off his
horse into a patch of

prickly pear cactus
and his gun snaps up

and opens a vein
in his forehead,

and blood is shooting out.

Everything goes wrong that can.

He wounded a buffalo,
after he finally found some,

but it got away.

The next day, he sees one
and he had a clean miss,

didn't even hit him.

They were living
on cold biscuits.

Their horses get
stampeded by wolves.

It's just miserable.

He woke up, one of
those mornings,

and Joe Ferris said... he
woke up and looked around

at this wet and cold, and says,
"By Godfrey, but this is fun."

Finally, after 3
days of scouring the Badlands,

they encountered a big bull.

This time, Roosevelt
brought it down.

He immediately took a
$100 bill out of his pocket

and gave it to Joe
Ferris, his guide,

and then he did an
"Indian War Whoop dance"

around the carcass.

They cut out steaks.

They cut off the
big, shaggy head

and... and then had it mounted

by a taxidermist in Bismarck.

Before heading home,
Roosevelt impulsively invested

some of his inheritance in
one of the many cattle ranches

sprouting up on the
former buffalo range.

He would return off and
on for the next 4 years

to pursue what he
called "the strenuous life"

and to escape the
grief he suffered

when his wife and mother
died on the same day.

"Black Care," he said,
"rarely sits behind a rider

whose pace is fast enough."

Roosevelt would
eventually write a book

about his experiences.

In it, he declared
that he had become

"at heart as much a Westerner
as I am an Easterner."

While
the slaughter of the buffalo

has been in places
needless and brutal,

and while it is to
be greatly regretted

that the species is
likely to become extinct,

it must be remembered that
its destruction was the condition

necessary for the advance of
White civilization in the West.

Above all, the
extermination of the buffalo

was the only way of
solving the Indian question...

and its disappearance was
the only method of forcing them

to at least partially abandon
their savage mode of life.

From the standpoint
of humanity at large,

the extermination of the
buffalo has been a blessing.

We are sorry to see

that a number of hunting
myths are given as fact,

but it was after all
scarcely to be expected

that with the author's
limited experience

he could sift the
wheat from the chaff

and distinguish the
true from the false.

George Bird Grinnell.

When George Bird Grinnell,

the publisher of "Forest
and Stream" magazine,

gave Theodore Roosevelt's
book a mildly critical review,

the author burst into
Grinnell's office to complain.

The two men turned
the awkward moment

into the beginning
of a lasting friendship.

They both quickly realized
they shared much in common,

including a love of the West
and its big game animals.

Roosevelt had
two buffalo trophy heads

on the wall at his
home in Sagamore Hill.

In Grinnell's office, he
had two buffalo skulls.

And he wrote about them
and their presence in his office,

and what that evoked in him.

It reminded him of
the death of the bison

and what that meant.

Not a trophy. A reminder.

Together,
Roosevelt and Grinnell formed

the Boone and Crockett Club
to promote what they called

"the manly sport" of hunting,

and at its first meeting,

elected Theodore
Roosevelt its first president.

To these men,
there was no contradiction

between their concern
for conservation

and their love of hunting.

They wanted to
protect these species

because they wanted
to continue hunting them.

At the end of the 19th
century, there are a lot of men

who are terribly concerned
that this increasingly

urban and comfortable and
cosmopolitan American society

is pampering American men
and making them too soft.

And, so, what
American men need to do

is they need to
experience the frontier.

Roosevelt wanted to preserve

what he saw as
these American ideals.

He wanted to preserve
it in order to protect

his own ideas about
national progress,

about White masculinity,
about his own race.

At the same time
it promoted sports hunting,

the Boone and Crockett
Club dedicated itself

to "the preservation of the
large game of this country"

and called for strict
regulations against

the rampant market hunting
laying waste to so many species.

Through his
friendship with Grinnell,

Roosevelt was beginning
to broaden his view about

Americans' responsibilities
toward wildlife...

Including the buffalo.

Those guys
first started introducing

the idea that we have
to operate with restraint.

And that was a
revolutionary idea.

This idea that we have wildlife
that is owned by the public.

Like, the American
people own wildlife.

And the government, state
and federal governments,

help regulate it on our
behalf, but it's our thing.

Meanwhile, in 1886,

a onetime hide hunter named
Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones

left his home near
Garden City, Kansas,

and headed southwest
toward the Texas Panhandle,

where 10 years earlier
he had taken part

in the wholesale slaughter of

the buffalo herds on
the southern Plains.

The trip brought
back painful memories.

Man as
Jones: Often while

hunting these
animals as a business,

I fully realized the cruelty
of slaying the poor creatures.

Many times did I "swear off,"

and would promise myself to
break my gun over a wagon wheel

when I got back to camp.

The next morning, I would hear

the guns of other hunters

booming in all directions,

and would say to myself
that even if I did not

kill any more, the buffalo
would soon all be killed anyway.

Again, I would
shoulder my rifle,

to repeat the
previous day's murder.

I am positive it
was the wickedness

committed in killing so many

that impelled me
to take measures

for perpetuating the race

which I had helped
to almost destroy.

Did he have a
radical transformation? Maybe.

I do believe, though,
he had a legitimate

love for the animals.

But he was also... he
had a love for the dollar.

When a fierce winter devastated

the cattle herds on the Plains,

Jones remembered seeing
buffalo unfazed by similar weather.

I thought to
myself, "Why not domesticate

"this wonderful beast which
can endure such a blizzard?

"Why not infuse this hardy
blood into our native cattle

and have a perfect animal?"

Once he got to Texas,

Jones managed to
locate and lasso 18 calves

to bring back to
Garden City, Kansas.

He purchased more from
a private herd in Canada

and made more
trips back to Texas.

Then he began experimenting,

crossing buffalo bulls
with domestic cows,

to create what
he called "cattalo."

The results were mixed, at best.

Too many cows died in calving;

too many calves
were stillborn or sterile

to make it
commercially profitable.

But Buffalo Jones would
have much better success...

And a greater impact on
the future of the species...

By selling his bison to
zoos and wealthy families

interested in having
their own private herds.

I really like the fact
that Buffalo Jones

was willing to accept

his own responsibility.

He confronted his
culpability and took on himself

the responsibility of
trying to save the animals

that he had almost obliterated.

In early 1886...
The same year Buffalo Jones

had gone to Texas to try
to save some bison calves...

The chief taxidermist of the
Smithsonian Institution in Washington

was asked by the museum's
director to make an inventory

of the collection of bison
skins and skeletons in storage.

William T. Hornaday
quickly reported back

that they didn't have much...

And all of it was
in poor condition.

At age 32, Hornaday had
already gained a reputation

among his colleagues for
impatience and arrogance,

but he had also distinguished
himself as someone

who could hunt down
and kill exotic species...

Like elephants,
crocodiles, Bengal tigers...

Preserving them for
display in museums.

Now he set his sights
on the American buffalo.

He wrote to people,
all over the Plains and said,

"Where can I find bison
hides? Bison skulls?

Our collection needs them."

And all of his contacts wrote
back and said, "Good luck.

There are no more bison."

And, for Hornaday, this
came as a real shock.

He described it as a
"hammer blow to the head."

A species that to him,
and to many other people,

defined the nation,
was so rare that

the Smithsonian Institution,

the most prominent
museum in the country,

couldn't get hold of a
skull or a hide at any price.

But one of his correspondents

had alerted Hornaday
that a few bison

had been spotted between

the Yellowstone
and Missouri rivers,

so he immediately took the
train to Miles City, Montana,

in hopes that he could
kill some for the museum.

Hornaday was soon
crossing the rugged landscape

near the Missouri River Breaks,

still strewn with what he called

the "ghastly
monuments of slaughter,"

and after two weeks
of fruitless searching,

his party encountered
a few buffalo.

They shot one old bull,
but Hornaday considered it

unsuitable for display
because most of its fur

had already been
shed in the late spring.

They did manage to
capture a small calf,

which Hornaday named "Sandy,"

and brought back... alive...
To the Smithsonian,

where it became
a public attraction.

He was back in
Montana by September,

when whatever
bison he could find

would have full winter coats.

After two months, he and
his crew finally found and killed

more than 20 specimens,
including one gigantic bull.

In its body, Hornaday found 4
bullets from previous hunters.

Under different circumstances,

nothing could have
induced me to engage

in such a mean, cruel, and
utterly heartless enterprise

as the hunting down of
the last representatives

of a vanishing race.

But there is no alternative.

Perhaps you think a
wild animal has no soul,

but let me tell you it has.

Its skin is its soul, and when
mounted by skillful hands,

it becomes
comparatively immortal.

When another bull

was shot just before sunset,

more than 8 miles
from their camp,

they decided to
leave it for the night.

When they returned the next
day, they found the carcass

stripped not only of its hide,
but also its flesh and tongue.

The head was untouched,
except one side was painted yellow

and the other painted red.

And Hornaday
falls into a fit of anger.

"They... they've
desecrated my buffalo.

They... they've spoiled it."

And he, he thinks
it's vandalism.

It's not vandalism.

It's probably the Crow;
it might be the Blackfeet.

It could be Sioux.

But Natives have come and
they have harvested the meat,

which he wasn't going to do.

They've taken the
hide for their own uses.

And then they have done
the most important thing,

which is to bow,
in a sacred way,

to this creature by painting
it and positioning the skull.

It's a sacred thing
that they've done.

And he's pissed off because
they stole his specimen?

And he misses the lesson.

An animal whose
head is painted like that,

among some Native peoples,

symbolizes an ending of things,

a transition from one
moment in time to another one.

As the Crow leader,
Plenty Coups, put it

when he saw that
the buffalo were gone,

as far as he was concerned,

nothing else
happened in history.

That was the end of history.

This part of
Montana was the same area

where Lewis and Clark, in 1805,

had seen so many
buffalo that Lewis reported

the men had to throw
sticks and stones at them,

just to get them out of the way.

This was the same place
where, 5, 6 years before,

the hide hunters had shown
up, and a hide hunter could kill

22 buffalo in a morning's work.

And it takes Hornaday
more than two months

to find and shoot 22 buffalo.

That's the trajectory that
the bison had been on.

Back at the Smithsonian,

Hornaday eagerly started work

on a new way of
displaying his specimens.

He would place 6
of them in a group:

the huge bull he had
killed, a younger bull,

a yearling, two cows...

And the little calf, Sandy,
who had died in captivity.

All of them were
gathered around a small

alkaline watering hole
near some clusters of

sagebrush, buffalo grass,
and prickly pear cactus

Hornaday had brought
back from Montana.

They would be enclosed
in the largest display case

ever made for the museum:

a glass cube that
would allow visitors

to view them from all sides.

As a taxidermist, he
considered it his masterpiece

and hoped his display would
help galvanize the public

against the final extermination
of bison in North America.

He now blamed their
destruction on what he called

"man's reckless greed."

He also believed that
it had gone unchecked

because of the apathy
of average Americans.

His new mission
was to change that.

It was displayed at
the Smithsonian for 70 years.

People lined up to see it

and it was extremely popular.

It allowed people to
get closer to a bison.

They were able to see how
large these full-grown bison

were in comparison
to themselves.

They were able to get
a sense of these animals

as... as living beings.

Probably never
before in the history of the world,

until civilized man came
in contact with the buffalo,

did whole armies of men
march out in true military style...

and make war on wild animals.

Its record is a disgrace to the
American people in general,

and the Territorial, State,

and General
Government in particular.

It will cause succeeding
generations to regard us

as being possessed
of cruelty and greed.

In 1889, Hornaday created a map

showing how the buffaloes'
range had steadily collapsed,

and he estimated that
there were now 541 bison...

256 living in a few
zoos or private herds,

about 200 in
Yellowstone National Park,

and only 85 roaming free
and unprotected on the Plains.

It was all part of a much
larger pattern of destruction

that had reached a
crescendo in the last decades.

"Here," Hornaday wrote, "is
an inexorable law of Nature

"to which there
are no exceptions:

"no wild species of bird,
mammal, reptile, or fish

can withstand exploitation
for commercial purposes."

And he said it was
this "Inexorable law that

"any animal that got
commodified by the market

couldn't survive
it." And

he was pretty right about that.

Hornaday's idea was that
if we're going to conserve

some of these animals,
we're going to have to

protect them from the market.

Hornaday sarcastically noted

that Montana had recently
passed a law against killing bison...

10 years after they
had been slaughtered...

And predicted that
Texas might do likewise,

now that the buffalo there
had also been eradicated.

After the success
of his bison display,

he started to think bigger.

The next step, he
thought, would be

to begin to raise
bison in captivity.

Hornaday
persuaded the Smithsonian

to start a small
zoo on its grounds.

It included some deer,
prairie dogs, bears,

along with 4 bison that had
been captured in the Black Hills.

The attraction proved
immensely popular,

and Hornaday began pushing
for a more spacious location

than the lawn of
the Smithsonian.

With Congressional approval,
he scouted the Rock Creek Park

area of Washington
and selected a site

for what he hoped would
be a proper national zoo.

I cannot think
of much of anything

but the possibility of
doing something great

with the buffaloes for humanity.

My dream is a home
for my little pets,

to let them roam at will

with plenty of room
for a long time.

Molly Goodnight.

After her parents died,

Molly Dyer had singlehandedly

raised her younger brothers

and then married
Charlie Goodnight,

who was already
a legend in Texas.

He had been an Indian
fighter with the Texas Rangers,

blazed some of
the early cattle trails

north to the railroads,

and then established the first
ranch in the Palo Duro Canyon.

A cattleman, Goodnight
had little sympathy for buffalo;

he had paid to have the
buffalo in the canyon killed

so they wouldn't compete
with his cattle for the grass.

Horse Capture, Jr.:
Let's get rid of the buffalo

so my cows can run here.

My cows. Not
this, what's free for

the taking for all of us.

But "my," so I can make money.

And it's odd to get
rid of something

that everybody
could enjoy to eat

just for "my," the
ownership of a livestock.

I can't even comprehend that.

I don't know if...
there is an Indian alive,

or was alive, that
could comprehend that.

It seemed like a lack of ability

to enjoy what the Creator made.

In 1878,

Goodnight had sent
some of his cowboys

to drive the remaining
bison out of the canyon

and shoot any stragglers.

Molly, one of them remembered,

"put a stop to the whole thing."

She felt sorry for the buffalo,

considered them worth preserving
as part of the region's history,

and asked her husband
to find a few calves

she could nurture
around the ranch house

and keep her company.

Her closest neighbor
was 75 miles away.

"I was not very enthusiastic

over the suggestion,"
Charlie admitted,

but he went out
and roped a bull calf

and a young female bison anyway

and brought them in for her.

By 1889, the
Goodnights responded

to William Hornaday's inquiries
about private bison herds

and wrote him that
theirs now had 13.

Molly, I think,
deserves most of the credit

for switching this
buffalo killer, rancher,

Indian fighter, into a guy who
would start having some mercy.

She wanted him to
take pity on some calves.

And I don't know if she thought,

"Let's take pity on these calves

and we'll start reviving
the bison of North America,"

or just, "Let's
take some pity on

some of these calves
who've lost their mother."

Buffalo Bill was a good fellow,

and while he was no
great shakes as a scout

as he made the
Eastern people believe,

still we all liked him, and
we had to hand it to him,

because he was the only
one that had brains enough

to make that Wild
West stuff pay money.

Teddy Blue Abbott.

By 1889, Buffalo Bill Cody

was the most famous
American in the world.

To millions of people, he had
become the dashing embodiment

of a mythic West
of bygone times.

As a young man, he had worked

as a buffalo hunter
for the railroads

and a scout for the army
during the Indian wars.

His exploits had
been publicized...

And greatly exaggerated...
In scores of dime novels,

some of which he turned
into theatrical performances,

always featuring Cody
himself in the starring role.

The stage eventually proved
too confining and he launched

"Buffalo Bill's Wild West,"
an outdoor show that

promised "a year's
visit West in 3 hours."

It was, Buffalo Bill said,

"a noisy, rattling,
gunpowder entertainment,"

featuring real cowboys
and real Indians,

Pony Express riders
and Mexican vaqueros,

and a series of vignettes
supposedly demonstrating

the history of the West...

And Cody's glorified role in it.

The Deadwood
Stagecoach was attacked...

And saved by Buffalo Bill.

A wagon train was raided

and saved by Buffalo Bill.

A settler's cabin was
surrounded by Indians

and saved by Buffalo Bill.

A re-enactment of the
Battle of the Little Bighorn...

"Custer's Last Stand"...
Ended with Buffalo Bill

showing up while the words
"TOO LATE" were displayed.

Each performance also
included a stampede of buffalo

and a mock hunt with
Cody and his compatriots

firing blank cartridges
at the animals.

The crowds couldn't
get enough of it.

People loved these buffalo.

And he became the Great
Plains' first roadside hustler.

A million
people attended his shows

on Staten Island one summer.

Another million paid
to see him that winter

at Madison Square Garden,
where 20 of Cody's bison

perished from pneumonia.

He managed to replenish
them from his ranch in Nebraska

and, later, with
7 he bought from

Molly and Charles
Goodnight's growing herd.

It's amazing
how these transitions

were so abrupt that
a guy that kills 4,000

then becomes a guy,
within a decade or two,

becomes a guy who's trying
desperately to find a couple

in order to take them on
the road to teach people

about what they lost,
"they" being him...

the other day, right?

It's astounding.

In 1887, during a
triumphant tour of Europe,

Cody took his show to
England for the celebration of

Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee,

bringing along 97 Native
Americans and 18 buffalo.

"The Birmingham
Gazette," November 4th, 1887.

Additional interest is attached
to the buffaloes by the fact

that they are almost
the only survivors

of what is nearly
an extinct species.

According to Colonel
Cody, there are not so many

buffaloes on the whole
American continent

as there are in the exhibition.

The Deadwood Stagecoach carried

the kings of Denmark,
Greece, Belgium, and Saxony,

along with the Prince of Wales,

while Cody himself
drove the stage

during a simulated
Indian attack.

"I've held 4 kings,"
Buffalo Bill told a reporter,

"but 4 kings and the Prince
of Wales makes a royal flush

such as no man
ever held before."

He became so famous
that he would put up posters

that showed some
buffalo running.

In an oval cutout,
in the center of

the most prominent
buffalo, was just his face.

And it would say, in bold
letters, "I am coming."

He even had those in French.

Most Americans had never
been to the Great Plains, of course.

That's still true.
But most Americans

got their buffalo from Wild West

or from Hornaday's glass
box at the Smithsonian.

These played an
incalculably large media role,

public relations role, in
building a constituency

in the country to do something

to save this creature
from extinction.

The
wild Indian exists no longer.

The game on which he
lived has been destroyed;

the country over which he
roamed has been taken up;

and his tribes, one by one,
have been compelled to abandon

the old nomadic life,

and to settle down within the
narrow confines of reservations.

The magnitude of it is
equaled only by the suddenness

with which it has been wrought,

and by its completeness.

George Bird Grinnell.

For the Native
peoples of the Plains,

the final decades
of the 19th century

were the most
traumatic in their history.

Indian nations that
had gone to war

against White encroachments

had been defeated by
the United States Army

and forced onto reservations.

So were tribes that had
always remained peaceful.

Under law, Native
Americans were not considered

U.S. citizens, and to travel
beyond a reservation boundary

required government permission.

There was a system in place

in the 19th century that
was both enslaving people

and it was also taking
Indigenous people's

land and landscape
to feed kind of

this capitalistic machine.

It was not
inevitable. It was planned.

Well-meaning
reformers in the East,

calling themselves
"Friends of the Indians,"

pushed Congress to enact
a number of provisions

intended to hasten Native
Americans' assimilation

into the White culture
that now surrounded them.

Our belongings
were taken from us,

even the little medicine
bags our mothers had given us

to protect us from harm.

Everything was placed
in a heap and set afire.

Lone Wolf.

Children as young as 5 years old

were taken from their families

and sent to boarding schools...

Like one in Carlisle,
Pennsylvania...

Where they learned
English, and were beaten

if they spoke their
native language.

All vestiges of their
traditional culture

were to be removed.

"Education," said one reformer,

"should seek the
disintegration of the tribes.

"They should be
educated, not as Indians,

but as Americans."

"Kill the
Indian, Save the Man."

And that was said by someone

who was supposed to
be a "Friend of the Indian."

The only way that the
Native people could survive

is to not be who they were.

"Kill the Indian, Save
the Man" is kind of like,

save the bison, make it a cow.

It's saying they'll
be allowed to exist

as long as they don't
stay what they are,

as long as they become
what we want them to be.

Even today, people say,
"Well, it was inevitable,

it was going to happen."

It was not inevitable.

In 1887, Congress passed

the Dawes General Allotment Act.

It provided for each
Indian family to be given

160 acres of farming land

and 320 acres of grazing
land on the reservation.

But then, all the
remaining tribal land

would be declared "surplus" and
opened for Whites to purchase.

Tribal ownership... and
the tribes themselves...

Were meant to simply disappear.

Before the Allotment Act,
some 150 million acres

remained in Native hands.

Within 20 years, 2/3 of
their land had been taken.

The Allotment
Act was one of the most

devastating acts
for Indian people.

They didn't understand
private land ownership.

You didn't own land. The
land you were a part of;

you used the land for the
resources as you needed them.

The whole point of
assimilating Indians,

transforming Indians,
was to open this area

to settlement coming in.

That was the purpose then.

That was the government's goal.

The buffalo were gone, too.

Horse Capture, Jr.:
Well, since the beginning,

we and the buffalo have a
fairly long history together.

Co-dependent, in a way.

Just like my people,
their people suffered from

"manifest destiny."

They were victims of
genocide, ethnic cleansing,

westward expansion.

Shared history,
all the way across.

In the buffalo's
place, the government supplied

beef cows for the
Indians to kill and eat.

At one Lakota Reservation,
when the cattle were released

into a large corral,
the men mounted up

and brought them
down, just as they had

brought down
buffalo in the old days.

Eventually, the agent
put an end to that,

and built a slaughterhouse
to kill and butcher the cattle.

The Lakotas burned
the slaughterhouse down.

We always say,
"We're just like the buffalo."

They almost
exterminated us, too.

And, when, when
the zoos first started,

what they'd do, they'd
put buffalo in zoos.

And the old people would
say, "What did they do to us?

They put us on reservations,"
and we couldn't get

out of those reservations
without a permit.

You know, the
zoos kept the buffalo.

The White people
kept us on reservations.

Same thing.

There are stories about old men

going to those zoos
and seeing buffalo.

You can imagine the fence

and these old men
crying and praying.

Pretty soon, those buffalo come
over and they stand in front of him.

There was numerous stories
like that, where the buffalo

stand in front of him
and, and look at him

as he's praying and crying.

And then he has to go.

And the animals
stay in that zoo.

They saw, by that
point, an almost total

destruction of
all of the animals

that were sacred to them.

It was not just the bison.

What happened to the elk?

What happened to the wolves?

What happened to the grizzlies?

It was sort of destruction
after destruction

after destruction.

The elk and
grizzly bears that survived

could now be found
only in the mountains.

Bighorn sheep disappeared
from the Dakota Badlands.

Market hunters killed
millions of antelope.

Herds of cattle and
sheep now grazed

where the buffalo
had once roamed.

With the bison
gone, the prairie itself

began changing.

Millions of acres of soil

were plowed for the first time.

Wheat, corn, and other crops
replaced the native grasses.

Buffalo wallows... where vital
rainwater had once pooled...

Filled with sand.

On the southern Plains, in 1886,

the Kiowa calendar showed
a leafy tree above a lodge,

signifying another summer
without a Sun Dance,

because no buffalo
could be found

to sacrifice for
their ceremonies.

In 1887, they were able
to hold their sacred ritual

after they received one
from the Goodnights.

At the same time, the aging
Hunkpapa Lakota leader

Sitting Bull had been touring

with Buffalo Bill
Cody's Wild West Show,

where he was paid to
ride around the arena

once during each performance,

promoted as "the
slayer of General Custer."

He also signed
pictures of himself

for the awestruck visitors
who came to his tepee.

But after 4 months with
Cody, Sitting Bull had seen

enough of the White world.

He could not understand
why beggars were ignored

on the streets of big cities,

and he gave much of his pay away

to the hoboes and
newsboys he met.

Back at the Standing Rock
Reservation in Dakota Territory,

he used the money he had left
to provide feasts for his friends.

Horse Capture,
Jr.: Some of this is

very hard to put into words.

But sometimes there'd be

a certain amount of
emptiness in a spot.

You can have this emptiness
and you can't identify it.

It's only an
emptiness, you know,

and it's... maybe that
would have been a part of it.

But, also, we've
got a lot of things

that are... that are gone.

That are gone.

In 1890, a summer drought killed

whatever crops the
Lakotas were trying to raise.

The government had already
cut rations at every reservation

by more than 20%.

Whooping cough and influenza

spread among the hungry people,

particularly the children.

Then, word arrived
that a new ceremony

called the Ghost Dance
was sweeping through

many tribes of the West.

Preached by a
Paiute medicine man

and combining Christian
as well as Indian elements,

it offered dispirited
Native Americans hope.

My brothers, I bring
you word from your fathers,

the ghosts, that they are
marching now to join you,

led by the Messiah who
came once to live on Earth

with the White man,
but was killed by them.

I bring to you the
promise of a day in which

there will be no White
man to lay his hand

on the bridle of
an Indian's horse;

when the red men of the prairie
will rule the world. Wovoka.

Wovoka's prophecy
required men and women

to purify themselves, give up
alcohol, and forswear violence.

Then, they were to
dance in a large circle,

singing and calling upon
the spirits of their ancestors.

If they did, the Ghost
Dancers believed,

the Whites would vanish

and the buffalo would
cover the Plains again.

"Give me my arrows,"
they sang as they danced.

"The buffalo are coming,
the buffalo are coming."

Though he lived
in New York City,

the naturalist and writer
George Bird Grinnell

spent parts of every
year living among

the Pawnee, Blackfeet,
and Cheyenne,

listening to their stories,
studying their religion,

learning their history.

In the fall of 1890, he
watched the Cheyenne

hold a Ghost Dance.

Grinnell understood the
appeal of its message.

"This is only what
any of us will do,"

he wrote, "if we get hungry."

In the Lakotas' adaptation
of the ceremony,

Ghost Dancers
wore special shirts,

said to be impervious to
the White man's bullets.

Government agents
became alarmed,

fearing an uprising
was imminent.

As a precautionary measure,

Indian police at the
Standing Rock Reservation

were ordered to arrest the
most prominent Lakota chief...

Sitting Bull.

When some of his
followers resisted,

a fight broke out.

Both sides began firing

and a dozen people were killed.

Sitting Bull was one of them.

Several hundred
Lakotas, flying a white flag,

headed toward the Black Hills,

and planned to turn
themselves over to the U.S. Army

to settle things peaceably
before more blood was shed.

They encamped one night at
a creek called Wounded Knee.

The next morning,
December 29th, 1890,

soldiers armed with 4
devastating Hotchkiss guns

encircled the camp and began

confiscating the
Indians' weapons.

Someone's gun went off.

The soldiers opened fire.

When the shooting stopped,
more than 250 Lakotas...

Most of them women
and children... were dead.

So were 25 soldiers.

Horse Capture, Jr.: What
was they trying to do?

They was trying to
dance their ways back.

They were praying. They
tried to dance the buffalo back.

You know? And they
paid with their lives.

The most
shameful chapter of American history

is that in which is recorded

the account of our
dealings with the Indians.

The story of our government's
relations with this race

is an unbroken narrative of
injustice, fraud, and robbery.

We are too apt to
forget that these people

are humans like ourselves,

that they are
fathers and mothers,

husbands and wives,
brothers and sisters,

men and women with emotions
and passions like our own.

George Bird Grinnell.

Growing up in New York City,

George Bird Grinnell had
been a student of Lucy Audubon,

the widow of the famous
ornithologist and painter.

Among the things
she taught the boy

was how to observe and
appreciate the natural world.

But, even more
significantly, she teaches him

about an ethic that
was important to her

that she called "self-denial."

And what she really meant
by self-denial was the notion

that you would, you would

think about future generations,

that you would not do things
that you might want to do

in deference to thinking about,

how your children
and grandchildren

might live one day.

And that ethic runs
almost directly counter

to the prevailing
norms of the day.

As the editor of
"Forest and Stream" magazine,

Grinnell put Lucy
Audubon's lessons to work.

He railed against the
hat-making industry,

which had created
a fashion frenzy

for the colorful plumes
of birds in the Everglades,

threatening the survival
of egrets and ibises.

And he
decried the market hunters

who were supplying restaurants

with the meat of
passenger pigeons,

driving a bird that once existed
in the billions toward oblivion.

To help him carry on the fight

against this commercial
destruction of bird life,

Grinnell founded an
organization named in honor of

the Audubon Society.

But he never lost his focus
on the American buffalo.

Every saloon in
America wants to have

a stuffed buffalo head
to hang on the wall.

And the market for buffalo
heads goes through the roof.

And, what used
to be a $4.00 shot

if you killed a buffalo
and could sell its hide

becomes a $500 shot.

And the response to that
is poachers descend upon

these few places where
there still are buffalo remaining

and try to kill them.

By 1894, the last surviving herd

of free-ranging bison in America

could be found in
Yellowstone National Park.

But the superintendent
reported that poachers

had killed 114 of the 200

William T. Hornaday
had estimated

were there only 4 years earlier.

The Army was
responsible for stopping

poachers in Yellowstone
and for enforcing regulations

against vandalizing
the geyser formations,

but the park existed in
a legal no-man's land,

with no federal law
giving the soldiers

clear authority to
prosecute offenders.

Their only recourse
was a warning,

or in the most serious cases,

temporary expulsion
from the park.

No one understood the threat
to Yellowstone and its wildlife

more keenly than
George Bird Grinnell.

He knows
that it's this vast place.

He knows that there are
a handful of wild buffalo

who are still there because
they've been far enough away

from the railroads
that they still survive.

Grinnell realizes that
this is the buffalo's,

that Yellowstone is
the buffalo's last chance.

On March 13th, 1894,

two troopers out on patrol in
a remote corner of Yellowstone

heard shots in the distance.

They hurried in that direction
and soon came across

several buffalo carcasses.

A man was hunched
over one of them,

so busily skinning it that he
didn't realize anyone was there

until a soldier was beside
him with a drawn gun.

The poacher was Edgar
Howell, who had been

killing Yellowstone's
bison for years.

As luck would have it, a
reporter named Emerson Hough,

on assignment for Grinnell's
"Forest and Stream" magazine,

was also in the park...
With a photographer...

To write an article about
Yellowstone in the winter.

When the poacher bragged
that the worst punishment

he could receive for his crime
was expulsion from the park,

Hough realized he had
stumbled onto a great story

and quickly telegraphed it
to Grinnell in New York City.

Grinnell knew just
what to do with it...

And began to generate a public
outcry for Congressional action

through a series of stories,

along with photographs
that included

soldiers posing
with 9 buffalo heads

that Howell had not yet
hauled out of the park.

And it's a political
lightning bolt in Washington.

In his editorials,
Grinnell was very good

at explaining that
Yellowstone National Park

belongs to all Americans.

So that when someone,
when a poacher,

is stealing from
Yellowstone National Park,

he's stealing from you.

In Washington, Grinnell's friend

Theodore Roosevelt, now a
Civil Service Commissioner,

sprang into action.

He stalked the
corridors of the Capitol,

lobbying for a bill
that would institute

fines of up to $1,000

and jail sentences of up
to two years for offenders.

On May 7th, 1894...

Less than two months
after Howell's capture...

President Grover Cleveland
signed the bill into law,

authorizing regulations
that would protect the park,

its geysers, and its
wildlife... at least on paper.

The
nearer the species approaches

to complete extermination,

the more eagerly are
the wretched fugitives

pursued to the death
whenever found.

Western hunters are striving
for the questionable honor

of killing the last buffalo.

At least 8 or 10
buffaloes of pure breed

should be secured very
soon by the National Zoo

and cared for with
special reference

in keeping the breed
absolutely pure.

William T. Hornaday.

When the new
National Zoo opened in 1891,

William T. Hornaday was
no longer at the Smithsonian.

He was living in
Buffalo, New York,

working for a real
estate company.

Disagreements with his
old colleagues in Washington

had prompted him
to abruptly resign.

He was quite
notoriously temperamental,

irritable, difficult
to get along with.

But, at the same
time, very charismatic,

a great speaker, a
great public advocate.

He was genuinely
passionate about

the long-term
survival of the bison.

In early 1896,
he received an invitation

from the newly formed
New York Zoological Society,

asking whether he would like
to help them create in the city

what they envisioned
as the world's largest zoo.

Hornaday readily
accepted the job

to become its first director,

design it, and find
the best location for it.

He found that
location in the Bronx,

and for the next 3 years
personally supervised

every detail of
the construction...

From deciding which
trees could be cut down

to what animals
would be showcased.

When it opened in late 1899,

the Bronx Zoo was
an immediate success,

soon attracting more than
a million visitors a year.

Many of them seemed
particularly fascinated

by the small buffalo herd,

which in a few years
would grow to 26.

They included bison that
had originally been captured

by Buffalo Jones

and 3 bulls and a cow

from Charles and
Molly Goodnight's ranch.

Hornaday was proud that he
could now display live buffalo...

Instead of stuffed ones, as
he had at the Smithsonian...

To millions of Americans,
who, he hoped,

would join his newfound
crusade for preserving wildlife.

But he also worried that
a few bison saved in zoos,

on private ranches... or
even in the small herd

under the uncertain protection
of Yellowstone National Park...

Were not enough.

"The only way to
ensure the perpetuation

of the bison species
permanently," Hornaday said,

"is to create large herds,"

preferably in their
native homes in the West.

The idea that citizens
of the United States

had driven this species extinct

was... was offensive to
him, was an outrage to him.

But it was also tied up with his

strong sense of
racial superiority.

One of the
most prominent founders

of the Bronx Zoo
was Madison Grant,

a widely admired
conservationist,

who had led the effort to save
the Redwoods in California.

He was also a leading
proponent of a new

pseudo-science called eugenics.

It falsely claimed,
with no evidence,

that human beings
could be separated

into a rigid,
immutable hierarchy

based not only on
the color of their skin,

but the so-called
"purity" of their ancestry.

At the top were certain tall,
blue-eyed white Protestants...

Like Grant... the real
Americans, he thought,

who were the rightful inheritors

and now stewards
of the continent.

Everyone else was catalogued
in a descending order

of genetic inferiority.

Madison Grant would
eventually put his racist theories

in a book, "The Passing
of the Great Race."

Theodore Roosevelt
and William T. Hornaday

subscribed to many
of the book's views.

Hornaday was
stridently anti-Catholic,

stridently anti-immigrant.

He blamed Italian Americans
and African Americans,

without evidence,
for the decline of

songbirds in the American South.

These racists,
these White supremacists,

were only one group of those
who were saving the bison.

But they were sure there.
They were sure there.

More than 1,500
miles west of the Bronx Zoo,

the two biggest bison
herds in the nation

were being managed
by several families

on two reservations
on the northern Plains.

In South Dakota,
Frederick Dupuis,

a French-Canadian fur trader,

had married Good Elk Woman,

a Minniconjou Lakota,

and established a ranch on
the Cheyenne River Reservation,

where they raised 9 children.

In the early 1880s,
just as the hide hunters

were finishing their slaughter,

the Dupuis had
captured 4 bison calves

and began raising
them on the ranch.

By the time
Frederick died in 1898,

their herd numbered
nearly 80 buffaloes.

A Scottish immigrant,
James Philip...

Whose wife Sarah was also from

the Cheyenne River Reservation...

Bought the herd and moved
it to 6,000 acres of rangeland

along the Missouri River, a
few miles north of Fort Pierre.

Dupuis, and
Scotty Philip, these guys

must have had either
very tough wives,

or they were really in love
because they were the ones

that drove these two
hard-ass cowboys to go out

and take care of these buffalo.

One of
Scotty Philip's buffaloes,

named Pierre, became
an international celebrity

when it took part
in what was called

the "Bull Fight of the Century"

in the Plaza de Toros
in Juarez, Mexico.

When a spirited
Mexican bull was released

and immediately attacked him,

Pierre pivoted quickly
and the two animals

butted heads, bringing the
Mexican bull to its knees.

After several more attempts...
Each with the same result...

It began circling the arena,

looking for a
gate to be let out.

In quick succession,
3 more bulls

were sent in to attack Pierre.

Refusing to move, he knocked
them down one after another.

Then he stretched out
in the sun and took a nap.

A week later, a younger
bison bull, Pierre Jr.,

was scheduled to face a matador.

But the provincial governor
called off the spectacle,

not willing to risk losing
Juarez's best bull fighter.

By the early 1900s,
the largest herd of buffalo...

Including 300 bulls,
cows, and calves...

Grazed on the
Flathead Reservation

in northwestern Montana,

home of the Salish, Kootenai,
and Pend d'Oreille people.

Accounts of that
herd's origins differ,

but according to
tribal oral history,

sometime in the 1870s, a
young man named Latatí

traveled east over
the Rocky Mountains

to the buffalo plains and
brought back 6 calves.

The herd grew, and in the 1880s,

two ranchers on the reservation,

Charles Allard and Michel
Pablo, had bought them.

Charles Allard was part Indian

and married to Louise,
a Pend d'Oreille woman.

Michel Pablo was born on
the Blackfeet Reservation

and married to Agathe,
also a Pend d'Oreille.

My great-great-
grandfather, Michel Pablo,

was the son of, they
called him "Old Man Pablo,"

and Otter Woman, who
was Piegan Blackfeet.

So, he was half Blackfeet,
half Spaniard, or Mexican.

He saw the buffalo
at their prime.

I mean, he saw the buffalo
when there were lots of them.

The Pablo-Allard herd flourished

on the reservation's
lush pastures

just west of Montana's
Mission Mountains.

With 50 calves born each
year, their herd kept expanding.

When Allard died in
1896, his family began

slowly selling off his
bison to various buyers.

But Pablo stayed
put... and his buffalo

soon numbered in the hundreds.

It was much more
than a business for him.

He was a visionary.

He... he knew we
needed the buffalo

on this Earth to
survive as people.

Not just Indians; we
need the buffalo to survive.

We need that spirit.

Michel Pablo
was now in charge of

more buffalo than
anyone else in the nation...

Including the
federal government.

Despite the law passed
in 1894 to protect them,

the number of wild
and free-ranging bison

in Yellowstone National
Park had dwindled

to less than two dozen.

Part of the
motivation for the Americans

who were interested
in preserving bison

at the turn of the last century

was not to return
them to the wild.

It was actually to
preserve them so that

people could see them,
almost as a zoo-type species.

There was no
interest, at that time,

in creating large
landscapes where bison

could be a wild species.

There was an interest in
creating small landscapes,

where bison could be preserved,
where people could go see them.

Of all the unlikely places where

a herd of buffalo could be
found in the United States,

none was more unlikely than the
Blue Mountain Forest Reservation

in western New Hampshire.

Covering 24,000 acres
and surrounded by

an 8 1/2-foot-high fence,

it was the private retreat of

a millionaire banker,
Austin Corbin.

For years, he had
stocked his estate

with exotic game animals...
Caribou, Himalayan goats,

and wild boar from
Germany's Black Forest.

Corbin had also
purchased 10 bison

for $1,000 each from
Buffalo Jones in Kansas.

By 1904, Corbin's heirs
owned a herd of 160.

That same year, the
family agreed to provide

an unoccupied
house on the property

to an eccentric nature
writer from Boston

named Ernest Harold Baynes,

who was scratching out a
living by submitting stories

to newspapers and magazines...

Accompanied by photographs
taken by his wife Louise...

About birds and
snapping turtles,

squirrels, and opossums.

At Blue Mountain, Baynes
expanded his work...

And Louise kept her
camera ready to record it.

His wife Louise would
take pictures of him,

hundreds of pictures of him,

him feeding a bird off
of his lip, or a finger.

They had, wolf
pups that they named

"Death" and "Dauntless."

He had a pet red fox.

He adopted this wild boar

and took it on the lecture tour

until it grew into a real

Black Forest wild
boar with tusks

and kind of a mean temperament.

At the same time, he saw this as

part of a way to reach people.

He didn't think of wild animals,

I don't believe, as pets.

He believed that the way to
capture Americans' attention

to the importance of habitat,

and other things
for wild animals,

rather than just
slaughtering them,

was to engage people this way.

What captivated Baynes the most

was the buffalo
herd roaming across

the nearby pastures and forests.

In his first encounter with
them, they galloped away,

except for an immense bull,
who steadfastly refused to move.

Perhaps
never did I feel so much ashamed

in the presence of
any animal as when,

standing face to face with
that magnificent creature,

I thought of the wrongs
his race had suffered

at the hands of mine.

With the help of
the preserve's gamekeeper,

he brought 3 calves
back to his barnyard...

Two young bulls he named
War Whoop and Tomahawk,

and a female he
called Sacajawea.

He fed them cow's
milk from a baby bottle...

And watched them grow.

I decided that
the time had come to teach them

what they could do for
man in order that he in turn

might learn what he
could do with them.

When they were 5 months old,

he took them to the
Sullivan County Fair,

where they created a
sensation... pulling the stone sled

that carried a barrel of apples,

then a wagon with a load of hay.

For a grand finale, they
took him and a small cart

around the fair's race
track at full speed.

By the time War
Whoop and Tomahawk

were 2 1/2 years old,

they were famous.

Baynes brought them
to the Central Maine Fair,

where a young farmer
accepted the challenge for a race

between his steer and War Whoop.

"The result," Baynes wrote,

"was not in doubt for a moment."

This was the
last appearance of my calves.

They were trained
to awaken interest

in the American bison...

and they had done their share.

Because of the costs involved,

the Corbin family
began to talk about

getting rid of
their buffalo herd.

To save the bison as a species,

Baynes now believed a national
organization should be created

and the federal government
needed to establish

several more herds.

In Walpole, New
Hampshire, Baynes met with

Professor Franklin W. Hooper,

director of the
Brooklyn Institute

of Arts and Sciences,
to discuss the idea.

Hooper encouraged him
to write to a number of

prominent Americans,
including the enthusiastic hunter

who had now become
an ardent conservationist

and the President of the United
States... Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt responded
immediately and promised

to address the issue in his
annual message to Congress.

To the Senate
and House of Representatives...

I desire to urge
upon the Congress

the importance of
authorizing the President

to set aside certain portions of

the forest reserves
as game refuges

for the preservation
of the bison.

We owe it to future
generations to keep alive

the noble and
beautiful creatures,

which by their presence
add such distinctive character

to the American wilderness.

Baynes had also
been corresponding with

William T. Hornaday,
who shared his belief

that multiple federal
herds were crucial.

The close confines of zoos,

the uncertainties
of private herds,

and concerns about
crossbreeding with cattle

provided no guarantee
that any buffalo

would still exist in
another generation.

We got to the era when
you could just count them up,

right, there were so
few here and there.

It was perfectly plausible
that you could have

a disease break
out and it would kill

half of the animals
left in the country.

Half the animals
left in the world.

A lightning strike could
have walked away with 10%,

25% of the known animals.

There was a real vulnerability.

In some of the
surviving bison herds

that make it into
the 20th century,

there are a dozen,
or fewer, animals.

And there's one
dominant bull who may be

siring all of the animals.

And, so, it's a problem
with inbreeding.

'Cause there's just not enough
genetic diversity among them.

Zoos weren't big enough.

Private ownership
was too tenuous.

What you needed was bigger
places; and, most importantly,

you had to have the
stability and perpetuity

of government control.

By 1904, the most imposing home

on the Comanche
Reservation in Oklahoma,

called the Star House,
was a two-story structure

with spacious
wrap-around porches.

Inside, the home
boasted 10-foot ceilings,

a large dining room
with formal wallpaper,

and a wood-burning stove,

and plenty of bedrooms
for a big family.

Its proud owner
was Quanah Parker,

the leader of the Quahada
band of Comanches.

The story goes that
Quanah had met

a military general who
had 3 stars on his uniform.

And Quanah said, "I
deserve more than that,"

and more than doubled
that with the stars

on the roof of the "Star House."

Quanah and his Quahadas had been

the last to surrender
on the Southern Plains

and settle on a
reservation in 1875.

But now, no Comanche
was more committed

to helping his people
adapt to reservation life

than Quanah Parker...
Who had added

his mother's last
name to his own

as a sign of respect
for her memory.

He was a natural leader.

In one century,
he was a warrior;

in the other
century, he, he was...

Led us into the new world.

He was preparing us for that.

Trying to live in two worlds

is a very common thing
among Native American people.

He was rather
successful at it, I think.

But he must have lived in
turmoil some of the time, then,

wondering which way to go,

which direction to take
at this fork in the road

that he had been given.

He would adapt and adapt,

time and again, to do what
was best for his people.

He saw that certain
eras were fading,

but he never stopped
being Comanche.

He used the
same skills when dealing

with White officials
and businessmen...

Negotiating a deal that
permitted cattle drives

across Indian lands
in exchange for

taxes on each
wagon and each cow.

Eventually, he built his
own cattle herd of 500 head

on what was called
the "Quanah Pasture,"

and he ran a 150-acre farm
with crops and 200 hogs,

tended by a hired White man.

At his big house, he hosted

a constant stream
of prominent visitors.

With them, he never talked
about his time as a warrior,

preferring to win them
over with his easy manner

and ready sense of humor.

On some things, Quanah
Parker never compromised.

He always wore his
hair long and in braids,

even when wearing
a business suit.

Despite strict
government rules outlawing

polygamy on reservations,

he had 8 wives,

with whom he
fathered 24 children.

And he openly advocated
the use of peyote

in religious ceremonies,
though it, too, was banned by law.

"The White man goes
into his church house

and talks about Jesus,"
he explained about

the use of the hallucinogen,

"but the Indian goes into
his tepee and talks to Jesus."

On March 4th,
1905, Theodore Roosevelt

was inaugurated for his
first full term as President.

Riding in the parade were
6 Native American leaders

from different western
tribes, including

Geronimo of the Apache

and Quanah Parker
of the Comanche.

Invited to a private
reception at the White House,

Quanah learned that the
President was planning

a hunting trip to
Oklahoma in April

and offered to return
Roosevelt's hospitality.

When the President's
train arrived in

Frederick, Oklahoma,
Quanah was among

the 3,000 people
gathered to welcome him.

Then, the two men
and a small group

spent several days camping
and hunting coyotes...

Getting to know
one another better.

We know that
Roosevelt does not have

a favorable impression
of Indigenous people

anywhere on the planet.

He has the idea that
Indigenous people

represent an earlier
form of humans.

Roosevelt's time
with Quanah, it didn't totally

change his view
of Native people.

He had written some
really shameful things

about his opinion of Indians.

I don't know if it...
If it's true friendship,

or if it's just an
understanding by

two old warriors that we see
thing... the world differently.

After the hunt,
Quanah hosted the president

for lunch at his house.

It's during
this time, where Quanah

can talk one-on-one
with Roosevelt,

to be able to help
further instill these ideas

about the importance
of not just preserving

the relatively few buffalo left,

but being able to
revitalize herds.

The president
spent the night sleeping

on one of the porches.

Before he left, he
presented Quanah

with a small porcelain
cup... and then some news.

Congress, he said,
had given him authority

to create a preserve
for large game animals...

Especially buffaloes...
And his trip to Oklahoma

had convinced him that
the Wichita Mountains

would be a perfect location.

On June 2nd, 1905, Roosevelt
signed an executive order

designating 60,000
acres of national forest

as the Wichita Forest
and Game Preserve...

The first of its kind.

It was on land
that had been taken

from the Comanches
years earlier.

6 months later, in
the reception room

of the Bronx Zoo's Lion House,

the first meeting of
a new organization,

the American Bison
Society, took place.

It was something Ernest
Harold Baynes of New Hampshire

had been advocating
for for more than a year.

"The objects of this
Society," the group declared,

"shall be the permanent
preservation and increase

of the American bison."

William T. Hornaday was
elected as its president,

Baynes to serve
as its secretary.

Theodore Roosevelt had
agreed to lend his name

as honorary president.

Roosevelt's real presidency...
Of the United States...

Was dedicated to his
belief that a vigorous

federal government
was essential,

the only force
capable of combatting

the immense power of the robber
barons, monopolies, and trusts

that controlled the
nation's railroads, banking,

oil, timber, and
mining interests.

He also championed
the cause of conservation

as no president had ever done:

creating national
parks, national forests,

national monuments,
national bird sanctuaries,

and wildlife refuges.

"When I hear of the
destruction of a species,"

he now said, "I feel
just as if the works

of some great
writer had perished."

Meanwhile, William Hornaday
successfully lobbied Congress

to put up $15,000 for
fencing and buildings

at the Wichita
Mountains preserve...

After he promised that
the Bronx Zoo would donate

15 of their pure-bred bison
to provide the seed stock.

On October 11th, 1907,
everything was ready.

Hornaday had personally
designed special crates

for each animal...
9 cows and 6 bulls...

For their 1,500-mile
journey to Oklahoma.

At the Fordham railroad
station in the Bronx,

they were loaded
onto two freight cars

usually reserved
for transporting

expensive thoroughbreds.

They have to move them, not from

the last wild bastions,
you know, the last canyon,

um, hideouts of the animals
in the American West.

They have to move
them from the Bronx Zoo

back to the American West.

Not only that, by rail.

So, all this time we've been
taking hides and tongues,

and shipping it in trains to
be consumed in the East.

And people in the East
are taking trains out

to shoot the animals
out the windows

and just leave them
to rot on the Prairie.

But, all of a sudden,
now we're at this point

where we have a
small herd of them

in the biggest city
on the continent...

and they put 15 on a train
and drive them back out West.

This had to
be the most extraordinary

bison migration in the
history of North America.

They get on a train
in New York City

to head home to
the Great Plains,

to the Wichita Mountains,

which were the sacred place
where some people believed

they had first emerged
onto the surface of the Earth,

and where others had
believed this is where

they went to hide until it
was time to return again.

7 days later, they arrived

at the train station
in Cache, Oklahoma,

and were taken 12 miles
by wagon to a holding corral,

before their release
into the preserve.

Among the spectators
awaiting the bison

was Quanah Parker... along with
other Comanches and Kiowas,

some of them old enough
to remember the days

when buffalo
covered the prairie...

Some of them
children who had only

heard about buffalo in stories.

I'd like to think there is a
calling out to the buffalo,

"tasiwóo", "tasiwóo."

Calling out to those
buffalo and being able

to try to continue,
being able to reestablish

some kind of relationship
between Comanches

and those who
had, for generations,

provided so much for us.

What must have gone on
in their minds, you know,

in their... in their blood
memory, they had to be,

amazed and probably joyful.

Um... also, a kind of
remorse, a kind of sadness.

Quanah Parker cried when
he saw the buffalo return.

I can imagine that. You
know, I think that could be true,

not only of him, but
of many other people

who witnessed this
miracle of return.

One young woman
got up, very early in the morning...

For nearly two generations,

following the destruction
wrought by the hide hunters

in the early 1870s, the Kiowas
had passed along a legend

told by Old Lady Horse
about the last buffalo herd.

Last buffalo herd
appear like a spirit dream.

They had walked,
she said, into Mount Scott...

The sacred place from
which, the tribe believed,

the animals had first
emerged onto the Great Plains

in the age before people.

Into this world of
beauty, the buffalo walked.

After some
time in their holding corral,

the 15 buffalo from the
Bronx Zoo were set loose,

free to wander in
their new old home,

within sight of Mount Scott.

Old Lady Horse.
I like to think of her there.

If she had seen their return,

her sense of the sacred
would have been realized

at that moment as a
high point in her life.

That makes the story whole.

Less than a month
after the buffalo's arrival,

two calves were born.

Within 6 years, the herd
would double in size.

The people who are
interested in preserving the bison,

the American Bison Society
and associated groups,

are not at all interested in
preserving bison on behalf of

Indigenous people
in the Great Plains.

In fact, in many ways,

the preservation of
the bison comes at

the expense of
Indigenous people.

The notable bison
preserves, these are created

when what had been
very large reservations

were diminished
in size through this

complicated process
known as "Allotment."

So, ironically, the killing
of the bison by hide hunters

in the 1880s had come at
the expense of Native people,

and the preservation
of the bison

in the early 20th
century also comes

at the expense of Native people.

In Montana, much
of the Flathead Reservation

had been broken
up into small parcels

through the Dawes Allotment Act.

The remainder was
declared "surplus"

and was about to be
opened to homesteaders.

Michel Pablo realized
his buffalo pastures

would be divided up and
sold in the impending land rush.

You can't run
600 head of buffalo

on 160 acres.

So, Michel saw the finger
of doom for his buffalo.

Pablo offered to sell
his herd to the United States.

President Roosevelt
favored the proposal;

George Bird Grinnell
and others endorsed it.

But Congress refused
to appropriate any money.

He was so hopeful
that the buffalo would stay

that when he had to sell
them, his spirit was broken.

He was devastated.

The Canadian
government, looking to create

Buffalo National
Park in Alberta,

jumped at the opportunity
and bought the entire herd.

With Joe Allard, the
son of his late partner,

Pablo recruited
some local cowboys

and began to round up the
buffalo in the summer of 1907.

Pablo had estimated
it would take them

two years to gather
his herd into corrals

and get them onto freight
trains for shipment to Canada.

It took more than 5.

Instead of 350 bison, to
his surprise it turned out

he had nearly twice as many...

And they often proved unwilling
to leave their home range.

Have you
ever tried to herd buffalo?

It's not easy to herd buffalo.

They are astonishing in their
athleticism and their power.

But one thing they don't
do well is, like, take orders.

So, if somebody's
trying to round them up

and force them into little
carts, that's not an easy thing.

You don't mess with
a 2,000-pound animal

and survive.

One of the participants

at two of the roundups

was the painter
and former cowboy

Charles M. Russell.

He was world famous for
creating works that portrayed

a West that seemed
to be a fading memory...

Symbolized by the buffalo skull
he attached to every painting,

next to his name.

For Russell, the chance to
take part in another roundup...

This time with buffaloes...
Proved irresistible.

He rode with the cowboys,
told stories of the old days

around the campfire...
And sketched watercolors

to his heart's content,
sometimes adding them

to illustrate letters
he sent to friends.

Ultimately, Michel
Pablo would deliver

more than 670 bison to Canada.

But news of the sale had
created a national uproar.

"President Roosevelt
may easily be imagined

stamping his feet
and grinding his teeth,"

a Denver newspaper reported,

"when he hears that
his cherished ambition

"to secure for
American national parks

"the famous herd
belonging to Michel Pablo

"has been defeated by

energetic officials of the
Canadian government."

The American Bison Society
used all the negative publicity

to push Congress into
appropriating $40,000

to purchase and fence
29 square miles of land

in the Flathead Reservation
for a new buffalo preserve...

Not far from where Pablo's
herd had once grazed.

How dumb can
this be? What an insult.

You had the chance
to buy this premier herd,

and you make a
buffalo, bison range, um,

right in the midst
of where they were?

It doesn't make any sense.

The Bison Society then launched

a private campaign to raise
$10,000 to buy more buffalo.

Since some of Pablo's herd
hadn't yet been rounded up

for shipment to Canada,

many people hoped
the Bison Society

could buy them from him.

But no deal could be arranged.

Pablo said he wouldn't break

his agreement
with the Canadians,

which infuriated
William T. Hornaday.

He would never,
Hornaday wrote a colleague,

"ask favors of a half-breed
Mexican-Flathead."

The reservation agent
told George Bird Grinnell

that the problem was
what he called Hornaday's

"unpardonable sin"
of racial hostility.

In the end, the Bison
Society purchased

34 buffalo from a family
in Kalispell, Montana,

who had bought part of
the Allard herd back in 1902.

The Goodnights in Texas
donated two of their buffalo.

The Corbin family
in New Hampshire

gave 3 from their herd.

On October 17th, 1909,
the animals were released

to graze on the
National Bison Range.

The United States had 3
federal herds under protection...

In Yellowstone National
Park, the Wichita Mountains,

and now western Montana.

75 of Michel Pablo's buffalo
had eluded capture for Canada,

and for a while
they grazed outside

the new preserve's fences...

Sometimes creating problems
for homesteaders in the region.

The State of Montana
claimed jurisdiction

over what came to be
called the "outlaw herd,"

but declined any suggestions
to try and move them

inside the new
federal bison range.

Poachers went to work,

eventually killing them all.

Within the next 6 years,

more protected herds
were established...

At Wind Cave National Park
in South Dakota's Black Hills

and at nearby Custer State Park.

At Fort Niobrara in Nebraska.

Even one in a national forest

near Asheville, North Carolina.

In the Texas Panhandle,
Molly and Charles Goodnight

called for a Palo Duro Canyon

National Forest
Reserve and Park.

Legislation to create it was
introduced in Congress 3 times.

Each time, the bill
was turned down,

because the land was
not already federally owned

and purchasing it was
considered too expensive.

Over time, the old Indian
fighter Charlie Goodnight

had become friendly with
a number of Native tribes,

and he helped Quanah
Parker in his efforts

to have his mother
and little sister reburied

on the Comanche
Reservation in Oklahoma...

Not far from where the Wichita
Mountains herd now grazed.

In thanks, Quanah presented
Goodnight with a lance

he had used in the raid
against the hide hunters

at Adobe Walls back in 1874.

In 1911, he wrote
to Goodnight saying

he planned to bring 50
other Comanches with him

to Charlie's ranch
to "see your buffalo

and make these
old Indians glad."

But Quanah Parker never made it.

He died a month later...

And was buried,
as he had wanted,

next to his mother and sister.

5 years later, Goodnight invited

some Kiowas to his ranch.

They came to help make
a film that would capture

scenes from the West

the 80-year-old
Goodnight remembered...

More authentic, he hoped,

than the romanticized
Westerns playing

in movie theaters
across the nation.

The highlight was
a buffalo hunt...

With real Indians riding
after a real buffalo herd,

and finally bringing one
down with bows and arrows.

Think about
the trajectory of how

this occurred, all
these different people

doing their own thing,
trying their best, at least,

to save the bison from
vanishing completely.

And it finally got organized

and, when it did, we
have all of them to thank.

Even those whose views
on many things we despise,

recognizing that they
were all part of this

American collection of
people who had perseverance,

had a passion, and a desire,

without which
they would be gone.

In 1913, the
United States came out

with a new design
for the nickel,

done by the sculptor
James Earle Fraser.

Fraser said he wanted a coin

"that could not be mistaken
for any other country's coin."

On one side, the new nickel

showed the profile
of an American Indian.

On the other was
an American buffalo,

modeled after a bison Fraser saw

in New York City's
Central Park Menagerie.

We know its name.
It was called "Black Diamond."

And it lived in a cage.

And he uses it as his model.

And it was sold to a butcher.

And the model for
the buffalo head nickel

was processed and
parted out and sold as meat

in the Meatpacking
District in Manhattan.

And it opens up
this idea of just

how conflicted the symbol is.

We look at it and we see
a symbol of wilderness

and a symbol of the wanton
destruction of wilderness.

Horse Capture, Jr.: You
look at that old nickel,

there's a buffalo.

At one time, they almost
wiped them to extinction.

Why did the European put
that buffalo on that nickel?

Was it just a curiosity,
or was it something that

kind of meant something
to them in an odd way?

So, in my confusion, and
my need to understand,

is... do you...

have to destroy
the things you love?

By 1933, the
American Bison Society

reported that 4,404 buffalo

existed in 121 herds
in 41 different states.

Half of them were grazing in now

9 government-protected herds.

Compared to the millions
of buffalo that had once

covered the Plains,
those were tiny numbers;

but enough... and in
enough different places...

That the Bison Society began
making plans to disband,

declaring that the
American buffalo

was finally safe
from extinction.

This Society was
successful, but their

understanding of the problem
was really short-sighted.

They didn't know
about ecosystems.

They thought, if you got a
buffalo, you've saved him.

That's not it. You got
to save their habitat.

That same spring of 1933,

75 calves were born on the
National Bison Range in Montana.

One of them, a little bull,

had blue eyes and white hair...

A genetic rarity.

A white buffalo is so sacred

and so full of hope and
goodwill for the tribes.

Just a huge blessing.

It was a tremendous
gift from Creator.

The staff at the Bison Range

called the little bull
"Whitey" at first...

And its presence
turned the preserve into

a tourist attraction
for a while.

But to the Salish, Kootenai,
and Pend d'Oreilles

on the Flathead Reservation...

And to virtually all
other Native tribes...

A white buffalo was more
than a statistical oddity.

It had special spiritual
power and sacred meaning.

It was considered
"big medicine"...

And that became his name.

I was 3 years old.

My grandpa and my dad
took me to the bison range

and wanted me to touch him.

He was so old; he stood inside

this fence and he didn't move.

I touched him and I
thought he would be soft,

his head, like my teddy bear.

And it was bristly.

And that was my
first impression,

was he's big and I love his eyes

and he's bristly.

The story of the American
buffalo is a cautionary tale.

It's a lesson in how to
live sustainably with nature.

We didn't do a very good job.

We almost screwed it up.

But we didn't,

and, so, there's hope.

It's a possibility of
what could come.

You don't get a lot of chances

to correct history's mistakes.

You get a few. And
when you get them,

you damn sure better
take advantage of them.

I think we've got an opportunity

to do this with buffalo.

And, if we do, I think
America can look back

on its history and
say, "We got wise."

You're supposed
to make decisions

that go 7 generations
beyond you.

But we aren't
looking at the future.

We're looking at right now.
And that's not far enough.

She's all we have, this Earth.

And we destroy that,
we're destroying ourselves.

And we just don't get it.

The American
buffalo had been brought back

from the brink of
disappearing forever.

But its story is unfinished
and still being written,

taking new turns,
facing new challenges,

and offering more
lessons yet to be learned.

Being saved from
extinction is not the same as

being wild and free.

Today, the United States
is home to more than

350,000 bison.

Native peoples
oversee 20,000 of them.

20,000 more are protected
in federal and state preserves.

But the rest exist
in private herds,

many of them
confined like cattle,

fattened in feed lots,
raised for slaughter.

Until buffalo can
move, more or less, at will,

over a vast grassland,

we haven't restored them at all.

We've made them a very special

grass-eating zoo creature.

But to turn them loose
in... in the way that

they were meant to
be, the way they were

when Lewis and
Clark came through,

when Plains Indians
were flourishing,

it's a dream that I thought
would never happen

and it... and it's probably
going to happen.

Some ranchers and
many non-profit organizations...

Including the
Nature Conservancy,

the Wildlife
Conservation Society,

and American Prairie...

Have committed to
providing their buffalo

with more room to roam
and native grasses to eat...

Something closer to the
habitats they once knew.

Even the American Bison
Society has been revived.

It's going to be
a big job, but if,

if human beings are...

think they're the best
animal in the world,

now is our chance to prove it.

The most
important work of restoring

bison to their homelands
is being done in concert

with the people whose
lives have been intertwined

with the buffalo for
more than 10,000 years.

Back in 1991,
representatives from 19 tribes

gathered in the Black
Hills to begin to form

the Intertribal Buffalo Council

and organize attempts
to bring some of the bison

from Yellowstone and
other federal preserves

back to their reservations.

It was an act of healing
that would re-establish

a sacred connection
with the buffalo

that had been broken
for more than a century.

An elderly Lakota woman
took one of the founders aside.

"It's best you ask the buffalo
if they want to come back,"

she said, so, the group held
a ceremony to do exactly that.

"They said they wanted to come
back," the man remembered,

"but they said they didn't
want to come back as cows.

They wanted to be buffalo.
They wanted to be wild again."

Now, at least 80
tribes in 20 states

control their own
herds, grazing on nearly

a million acres of tribal land.

And on the Flathead Reservation,

the Confederated
Salish and Kootenai tribes

have taken over management
of the National Bison Range.

Bison are resilient.

And they have taught us
how to be resilient and adapt.

They've survived;
we've survived.

They're here; we're
here. We both persist.

There's a lesson
to be learned in that,

in that we cannot,
as human beings,

afford to do that to our
relatives, the animals.

Those are our relatives.
They are part of us.

And when you look at a
buffalo, you just don't see

a big, shaggy
beast standing there.

You see life. You see existence.

You see hope. You see prayer.

And you see the
future for your young,

the future for
those not yet born.

Horse Capture, Jr.:
Seeing them coming back,

seeing them in places
where their ancestors were.

Seeing them in... in their,
in their ancestral regions,

that's a good thing.

My people lived with them

for thousands upon
thousands of years.

And the modern-day
people can, too.

With this... adventure,
endeavor... that's going on

with the buffalo, what
I want for my people...

I want for you people.

I'm not stingy.

I want your
grandchildren to see them.

I want your boy to tell stories.

When you ain't here anymore,

he can tell your
grandchildren...

"I was with my
dad, your grandpa,

to go see them and it was good."

>>>>oakislandtk<<<<<
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