Buffalo!

 

Wehave had a busy week. I'm sorry I haven't mailed Flat Lala back to your teacher. I've been so busy at work -- and had so much I wanted to tell you -- that I couldn't let her go until I got the last messages written.

 Look what we saw coming home the other night!  Flat Lala jumped up and down and got so excited! We had to stop the car to take a picture for you. These are American Bison, but everyone calls them Buffalo.  Years ago, before this part of the United States was settled, huge herds of buffalo grazed the plains from Texas up through Kansas and farther north into Canada. The people who saw them said the herds were so big that the ground looked black with them.  Sometimes it could take more than a day for the entire herd to pass by. 

 The Native Americans hunted the buffalo, ate their meat, made their houses from the hides, and used nearly everything that could be harvested from a kill. ("Everything but the "Moo" was the way the old timers expressed it.) 

  You notice how dark and shaggy their manes are?  When Native Americans first saw African American soldiers, they thought their black curly hair looked like buffalo manes, so they called the African Americans' Buffalo Soldiers.  The Buffalo Soldiers have a proud history within the American Army.

After white men started settling the plains they hunted the buffalo nearly to extinction. Fortunately some herds survived. Today we still have buffalo because ranchers have kept small herds and raised them. The buffalo we saw live just south of Burlington, Kansas on a farm owned by the local banker.