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Prophecy Of The Returning Buffalo
In the Ghost
Dance of the late 1880's, Plains Indians spoke of a time when the buffalo would
return, signaling the collapse of white society and a reclamation of lands taken
from the tribes and their buffalo brothers. Before the white man wiped
them out, the Great plains were home to buffalo herds numbering 30 to 50
million. Three hundred buffalo were recently released into the Nature
Conservancy's 36,600 acre preserve on the Kansas border where biologist Bob
Hamilton hopes to grow them into 1800 head over the next ten years. This
adds to the growing population of 135,000 - four times their 1970 numbers. A s
the buffalo move into the land, people continue to leave. The populations
of Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and the Dakotas have declined to half their 1930
levels. Now the only growth in rural counties is among the Indian tribes
where in South Dakota alone it has doubled since 1960. According to Ed
Valandra, a Lakota Sioux activist, Lakota narratives tell of a time when man and
buffalo were one. They lived in a balance that made it possible for both
groups to "live well in the natural world".
(From Earth Changes Report,
Jan 1994)
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