Bison

This is the Plains Bison. While the popular name is Buffalo, these magnificent animals are not in the same family with the buffalo found in Asia and Africa. Once, as many as 30 million of these bison roamed the Great Plains from Texas to the Canadian border. It was said that it could take all day for a single herd to pass by. By 1850 the Plains Bison population was split into a small Northern herd and the Southern herd covering parts of Northwest Texas, Oklahoma and Southern Kansas.

Plains Native Americans like the Comanche and Kiowa followed the bison from Montana and Wyoming into the southern plains. The Comanche Nation ruled an area of a quarter of a million square miles for 250 years in a society that depended on the Bison for food, shelter and clothing. The demise of the Bison also meant the demise of the Plains Native American.