December 6, 2001

Plains Folk: Broken Hearts and Bison

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Dan O’Brien is a Romantic, which is just another way of saying he is a plainsman. And he has a Broken Heart. Read that several ways. His new book (Random House), "Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch," is mostly about the conversion of his ranch on the north side of the Black Hills, the Broken Heart, from cattle to bison. He also is a middle-aged white guy from the northern plains, and so sure enough, he has a broken heart (as confirmed by several allusions to his love life, as well as his general rhetoric). And then there’s the whole matter of the Great Plains as a place with a broken heart, a metaphor you may or may not accept, while still appreciating Dan’s book.

Broken Heart is good reading for plains folk in two ways. It’s enjoyable reading because O’Brien is a lyric craftsman who writes the plains in bifocal, capturing not only the vistas but also the details (largely because of his experience in wildlife biology). It’s also good in a reflective and moral sense. O’Brien is one our thinkers trying to define the middle landscape for life on the plains now and in future, thinking about the plains as a place to live and make a living.

Like the rest of us he has his biases. He admits a fixation with "a romantic little kid’s dream of cowboys, horses, and big sunsets" and says it has "taken me a long time to come to grips with the reality of life on the Great Plains." He sometimes overstates the moral virtues of bison, which are not the natural herbivores of the plains, but rather one historic possibility. Sometimes also he succumbs to the regional habit of scapegoating, blaming things on government policy in collusion with industry, whereas most bad policy is just dumb policy, not evil.

On the other hand, O’Brien has some refreshing ideas the country needs. He points out the virtues of newcomers in plains country, for instance, because "people from the outside bring new ideas that cross-pollinate with the ideas that are already here." Likely to the dismay of the animal rights crowd, he acknowledges the human place as predator in the food chain, frankly recounting the pasture killing of bison for market, including just where to shoot a beast to drop it cleanly.

That privileged place as top predator, though, also entails responsibility. O’Brien has no gauzy delusions that you can turn bison loose, or in other ways just leave nature alone, and expect things to be all right. He sees himself, he sees humankind, as manager of the landscape–not some absentee owner, but a curator whose eyes are keen to range conditions and whose back aches from driving fenceposts.

This manager would like to see people in better touch with the sources of what they eat. He would like to see more wildlife thriving on an aesthetically pleasing landscape. And he would like to have a good sense of community with his neighbors. Does anyone want to quarrel with these desires?

Ah, but achieving them is another matter. (Is that what you’re telling us with that passage on page 131 about rolling up used barbed wire, Dan?) While participating in the expansion of the bison industry (one of those guys who bought in, unfortunately, on the high market), O’Brien nevertheless warns, "There was great danger that they would be considered just another commodity, no different from cattle, pork bellies, or frozen pizzas on a shelf." He mourns the trend in the bison industry of reverting to beef-industry models, commodifying bison so thoroughly as to erode the very virtue of the stately animal and destroy the communion of consuming its flesh.

It’s good meat. So’s the book.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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