Land, Indian, Buffalo A Natural Balance

“It is almost impossible for a civilized being to realize the value to the Plains Indian of the Buffalo,” wrote Colonel Richard Irving Dodge in 1882. “It furnished him with home, food, clothing, bedding, horse equipment, almost everything.” The great beasts once covered the Plains, but despite their numbers they did not overgraze it. Dodge noted that “when the food in one locality fails, they go to another, and towards fall, when the grass of the high prairie becomes parched up by heat and drought, they gradually work their way back to the South … whence … they are ready to start … northward [again].”