Blood Memory
The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The epic story of the buffalo in America, from prehistoric times to today—a moving and beautifully illustrated work of natural history inspired by the PBS series "American Buffalo"
The American buffalo—our nation’s official mammal—is an improbable, shaggy beast that has found itself at the center of many of our most mythic and sometimes heartbreaking tales. The largest land animals in the Western Hemisphere, they are survivors of a mass extinction that erased ancient species that were even larger. For nearly 10,000 years, they evolved alongside Native people who weaved them into every aspect of daily life; relied on them for food, clothing, and shelter; and revered them as equals.
Newcomers to the continent found the buffalo fascinating at first, but in time they came to consider them a hindrance to a young nation’s expansion. And in the space of only a decade, they were slaughtered by the millions for their hides, with their carcasses left to rot on the prairies. Then, teetering on the brink of disappearing from the face of the earth, they would be rescued by a motley collection of Americans, each of them driven by different—and sometimes competing—impulses. This is the rich and complicated story of a young republic's heedless rush to conquer a continent, but also of the dawn of the conservation era—a story of America at its very best and worst.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Producer Duncan and documentary filmmaker Burns (The Dust Bowl) present an elegiac complement to their PBS series, The American Buffalo. The authors highlight how Indigenous people lived with, revered, and used buffalo for food and shelter for thousands of years before the establishment of the first British colonies in North America: "It became a relationship so immediate and personal, I think, that they had to formulate an idea of the buffalo being equal to them in many ways," says Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday. Duncan and Burns argue that U.S. government officials looked approvingly on the carnage wrought by buffalo hunters in the second half of the 19th century because they believed that it would force Native Americans to remain on reservations and take up farming. Conservation efforts brought the species back from the brink of extinction (a Smithsonian taxidermist estimated that by 1889, only 541 buffalo remained in the U.S.), the authors write, noting the InterTribal Buffalo Council has since 1991 relocated buffalo herds from Yellowstone to 80 tribes across the U.S. The enlightening interviews place a welcome emphasis on Native American perspectives, and the lavish photography demonstrates both the buffalo's majesty and the horrific scale of their slaughter. This will bring readers to tears, then fill them with hope. Photos.
