The expedition used buffalo for food, clothing, blankets, tents, saddle pads, and moccasins for both men and horses.
Every part of the bison was used by the American Indian from bones to dung . . . .
Bison Gallery
Art featuring the iconic buffalo
A small gallery of art featuring the American Bison.
In this interview, Dan Flores, A.B. Hammond Professor of History at The University of Montana, sets the scene at the time of Lewis and Clark, and then discusses some of those circumstances which brought the American bison to the brink of extinction.
For more than a hundred years the American bison has been enshrined as a symbol of the American West in the first line of a song known around the world, “Home on the Range.”
To some extent, the Corps of Discovery used buffalo much as the Indians did–for clothing, blankets, tents, saddle pads, and moccasins for both men and horses. After railroads, demand for buffalo robes soared, the iconic animal’s downfall was swift.
Meriwether Lewis’s recitation of Charbonneau’s recipe for buffalo sausage, known as “white pudding,” serves not only as documentation of a unique frontier cuisine, but also as an example of the captain’s own brand of satire.
Bison Encounters
Bison in the journals
A synopsis of the Expedition’s encounters with the American Bison including 17 key journal entries and commentary.