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March
4, 2004
Plains
Folk: Hornaday
Tom
Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University
Irony drips from the
story of William T. Hornaday, sportsman, taxidermist, curator and author
of “The Extermination of the American Bison,” 1889. Chief
taxidermist of the Smithsonian, he feared that the bison were doomed to
degenerate in captivity, if they escaped extinction.
Hornaday even feared no good likenesses would survive. Stuffed buffalo
in museums had been badly handled, he mourned, stuffed with straw or excelsior
so they sagged sadly. “It is impossible for any taxidermist to stuff
a buffalo-skin with loose materials and produce a specimen which fitly
represents the species,” he said. “The proper height and form
of the animal can be secured and retained only by the construction of
a manikin, or statue, to carry the skin.”
Hornaday traveled the West documenting the natural history of and human
experience with bison. He was intrigued with individuals such as S.L.
Bedson of Manitoba and C.J. “Buffalo” Jones of Kansas who
kept bison in captivity and crossbred them with domestic cattle. This,
he thought, would “introduce a strain of hardy native blood in their
stock” and make them “capable of resisting a much greater
degree of hunger and cold.” He noted, “A buffalo can weather
storms and outlive hunger and cold which would kill any domestic steer
that ever lived.”
He was both appalled and fascinated by the wanton slaughter of buffalo
on the Plains. “The primary cause of the buffalo’s extermination,”
wrote Hornaday, “was the descent of civilization, with all its elements
of destructiveness, upon the whole of the country inhabited by that animal.
From the Great Slave Lake to the Rio Grande, the home of the buffalo was
everywhere overrun by the man with a gun.”
His response was to go and shoot some buffalo himself. Given the near
extinction of the species and the poor quality of museum specimens, the
Secretary of the Smithsonian in 1886 ordered Hornaday “into the
field at once to find wild buffalo, if any were still living, and in case
any were found, to collect a number of specimens.”
Working out of Miles City, Mont., that spring, Hornaday’s party
scoured the countryside. They caught a calf alive, the mother escaping.
Then they found two bulls, killing one. Having determined there were still
bison in the area, they resolved to return in the fall to take prime specimens.
That hunt was successful, culminating in Hornaday himself wounding a large
bull in a horseback chase. Before dispatching the wounded beast, he sketched
it as it stood, studying its form and posture.
The results of the hunt, as well as Hornaday’s taxidermy, were The
Groupan aggregation of six bison displayed in a monster glass case at
the national museum. Front and center among the life-like beasts was Hornaday’s
own bull, “the giant of his race.” This was not just an exhibit;
it was a trophy.
The Smithsonian dismantled the exhibit in 1955 and shipped the bison to
the University of Montana. Eventually the people of Fort Benton raised
money to bring the Hornaday buffalo to their Museum of the Northern Great
Plains. Following some restoration work, the animals went on display again
in 1996.
“The Extermination of the Bison” contains some remarkable
illustrations. There are line drawings of buffalo skinning made from photos
taken by the classic Montana frontier image-maker, L.A. Huffman, as well
as drawings by Ernest E. Thompson (a.k.a. Ernest Seton Thompson, founder
of Scouting in America). Web users, I’ve posted some of the artwork
at: http://www.plainsfolk.com/weblog/blogger.html
###
Source:
Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942, isern@plainsfolk.com
Editor: Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.nodak.edu
Click
here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern that is suitable for printing.
(1.5MB b&w photo)
Click
here for a TIF photo of Tom Isern wearing a hat that is suitable for printing.
(1.3MB b&w photo)
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