Tatanka
The first time I heard the Native American word for buffalo — tatanka, it was in the movie Dances With Wolves. Can you envision Kevin Costner as John Dunbar, index fingers extending up from his ears, imitating horns? Communication without a shared language — coming back to the basics of signs?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen that movie — a lot, will have to suffice. I still keep a VHS cassette in a drawer at home. For those of you who know me, that’s saying something, right? I’m not big on saving stuff.
Historical fiction reels me in every time. The story of a lone white man, chock full of principle and fortitude on the frontier is irresistible — a true hero’s journey. Against social norms, he followed his heart and conscience, befriending Sioux, Two Socks the wolf, and finding a woman to love. I just might have to dust off that tape when I get home.
There is a very small zoo in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, near where I grew up. It has been home to two lonely buffalo for as long as I can remember. A search tells me the massive animals only live up to twenty five years in captivity. The buffalo housed in the small enclosure today are certainly not the same mangy beasts I saw in my youth.
Yesterday, the bison herd I watched from the safety of my truck window changed my tatanka adjective from mangy to majestic. Sure, they are the same massive, odiferous, shedding bovines I’ve seen in zoos, but to see them herding, free in their natural habitat was awe inspiring. If only I could have had a private viewing — waved a wand and made all of the other vehicles with humans hanging out of windows and sun roofs disappear, it would have been a perfect moment. (I know, I know — they had as much right to be there as me. Can’t blame a girl for having a wish.)
The herd was split across the road with the vast majority grazing outside the driver’s side window. When we first came upon the congested stretch of stopped vehicles, I was gifted the scene of several beasts running down a gentle slope to join the herd.
Tatanka rolled in the dirt, nursed their young, eliminated their waste and grazed as if they were not being watched and photographed by mobs of people. They simply did not have a care about us.
On the other side of the asphalt, the beasts were much closer. They were not camera shy and allowed me opportunity for these:
We spent twenty minutes or so just watching — ooohing, aaahing and saying, “Did you see that? Look at that one!”
Although I knew that millions of bison had been whittled down to a population of approximately one thousand by the early nineteen hundreds, I felt the sadness of humanity’s gluttony a little deeper yesterday. Done is done, and efforts continue to keep a healthy herd of bison within Custer State Park. It serves as a great reminder that man could better serve by treading lightly in this world.
We made a stop in one of the visitor centers after seeing the tatanka. I asked the ranger, “The spot where we saw the herd — are they there often?”
“Right now they are being contained in that section of the park. We need to manage the areas in which they graze. They are not always near the road. In fact, this week there have been days when guests have only seen one or two buffalo. Who knows where the other fourteen hundred are then,” she replied.
“So, we were lucky today?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
Instead of luck, I choose to think of my brush with majesty as a gift — a gift I wanted to share with you.
