It is the final Tuesday in August, and with today’s post, we wrap up our current exploration of some of the animal spirits most closely identified with our peoples, and with the roles they play in indigenous art. In so doing, I have saved perhaps the most iconic animal for last, one whose kind are known to many of our peoples as”brother,” and whose entire beings have sustained our way of life since the time before time.
I have written about Buffalo here with some regularity — most recently, yesterday, when I noted some of the lessons he has to teach us:
Driven to the brink of extermination, some of these powerful spirits planted their feet and refused to budge, in a manner of speaking. It required tremendous work on the part of our peoples, coupled with infusions of resources from a guilty government, but these animals whose very existence is synonymous with courage and heart adapted to protected environments, and in some places on this continent are once again thriving.
Adaptability, not assimilation.
Being human, we are slower learners, more bull-headed than the biggest bull buffalo, more stubbornly resistant to change. But our brother of the plains is nothing if not a patient teacher, one who has lent us his wisdom, his body, his spirit, his medicine since time immemorial.
Buffalo is one of those rare spirits whose entire being is of use: In traditional cultures, nothing goes to waste. The meat feeds entire communities; the hides are mused for robes, for shelter, for the music of the drum and for art. The sinew has all sorts of practical applications, and the bones . . . well, the skull above is a perfect example. Every part of Buffalo’s being can be used for practical or more esoteric purposes. Some even drink the blood ceremonially.
[A note: I will use the name “Buffalo” throughout; it is how our peoples have always referred to the great animals, and while I know that they dominant culture insists that only “bison” is correct, we understand names and identity in other ways. For our particular context, notions of “correctness” are measured by our realities and understanding, not by those of an invading and appropriating culture.]
In nearly every conversation about Buffalo, we seem to come back to two overarching themes: the great value that every part of these magnificent creatures has historically held for our peoples; and the fact of their near-complete destruction at the hands of colonizing forces. Given the reality of our history upon this land, it’s as impossible to unbraid the two themes as it is to separate Buffalo’s identity and existence from our own. It should surprise no one, then, that the great beasts play a central role in Native arts and cultural pursuits, both in addition to and apart from their more practical influences on our ways of life.
Before we get into the role of Buffalo as model, muse, and symbol, I want to revisit the relatively recent history of these animals on this land, their own land, when invading forces arrived. A couple of years ago, I wrote briefly about the physical history of Buffalo on this continent, and on the existential threat that colonial invasion posed to its survival:
Buffalo itself, nearly a chimera for our peoples, driven to the literal brink of extinction by a toxic combination of colonialist greed and racism spiked with the heedlessness of power. The vast herds that roamed these lands and sustained our peoples for millennia, numbering some 25 to 30 million strong, reduced to fewer than 100 by the late 19th Century. Endless, heedless slaughter of the beautiful animal, in part because they could, in part because because it was an early form of cultural appropriation that provided tangible trophies, in part with the explicit purpose of exterminating our peoples. One white man alone was responsible for killing nearly 6,000 of the great beasts in one two-month period (destroying his hearing in one ear from the repeated shooting, a shamefully small penalty for the destruction he wrought).
For many of our peoples, Buffalo was more than a food source: He was a source of support for every aspect of life, a spirit being, a brother, family. And they were treated to the ghastly spectacle of these family members’ corpses massacred by the hundreds and thousands, tossed into piles like so much trash. Worse, perhaps, were the “buffalo hunt tours” once the railroad that helped to sow the seeds of their destruction began to snake across the plains: Those who could pay for the tour could bring their weaponry aboard the train and from the windows and roofs of the railcars, shoot the buffalo for sport. The men fired randomly, at will and whim, and as the Iron Horse sped past, the buffalo were left to die where they fell, rotting in the prairie sun, every gift they had to offer — meat, hide, sinew, medicine — laid waste, nourishing nothing more than vultures and flies.
Fewer than 100 remained.
It’s no wonder, then, that an animal spirit already so integral to some indigenous cultures’ lifeways and spiritual traditions would play a central role in their stories of salvation. It’s similarly no wonder that, in the face and teeth of a continent-wide campaign of genocide, other indigenous cultures would adopt the imagery of that savior spirit, the Sacred White Buffalo Calf. I’ve written about the old story, and about its intertribal adoption as both symbol and shield, here. It was one of the first pieces posted here — the fourth entry, to be exact. There is no need to revisit it in detail today; suffice to say that it was a story of a dream, a vision, a desperate hope for survival, of an equally desperate quest to rebuild a population (or several of them) after a series of near-extinction events.
Today, Buffalo itself is an art form: hide, head, horns. It’s not at all uncommon, in Indian Country, to see buffalo skulls like the one shown above, hand-painted in symbolic patterns and hanging from walls, doors, arbors, or other traditional areas. The bone can even be used to make beads, although I suspect that other animal bones form the bulk of the bone beads being made today.
Beyond the obvious art of the skulls, perhaps the most obvious creative use of Buffalo rests in his hide. It’s actually creative in both primary senses of the word, and intensely practical, too. Hides were used for shelter and warmth: as the covering for tipis and lodges; to serve as blankets and robes and other articles of clothing, from shirts and leggings to outerwear and moccasins. Native artisans also used them for protection of more literal and metaphorical sorts: They created quivers from them to hold bow and arrows, and used them to cover shields for combat and to create more symbolic shields designed for medicine. [While we’re on the subject of weapons, buffalo sinew was also frequently used in the art of weaponry, as bowstrings and used to secure arrowheads, arrow shafts, and the heads of spears, axes, and tomahawks.]
But humans like both their clothing, their living arrangements, and even their armor to be pleasing to the eye, and so our ancestors began adding their own artwork to buffalo (and other) hides in the form of painted imagery. Some of these were used, again, as shelter and as clothing; eventually, some became entirely decorative, bold pieces to hang on a wall. Some cultures used these to tell stories, and in some instances, such storytelling was a form of formal instruction, one that documented the people’s history, from origins to migrations to prowess in the hunt and in battle. In this way, hides replaced the petroglyphs and pictographs of rock art and drawings upon cave and other walls, and in effect became the first real painter’s canvas.
Buffalo hides could also be put to use in a wholly separate art form: Music. The hides could be stretched across a drum frame (and their relative size would have made them useful for the extraordinarily large group drums like those see today at powwows). When it comes to drums, some artists also choose Buffalo’s image as adornment, as in the painted hand drum pictured above featuring the heads of four Sacred White Buffalo. Many different tribal nations also pay tribute to the animal’s spirit by way of the Buffalo Dance, which varies (slightly within regions; significantly between regions). In some, the male dancers wear the hollowed-out head and horns of an actual buffalo over their own heads, with the curly hide from the hump cascading down their backs.
But much of art is representational, and need not incorporate the physical form of a particular being to be infused with its spirit. This is perhaps nowhere more true than in Native art. And one of the art genres is which Buffalo most popularly appears is one that is decidedly representational: Sculpture and carving.
Indigenous sculptors are especially fond of creating works in the image of Buffalo, who, over millennia, has proven to be a powerful subject and symbol. The carvers of Taos Pueblo are no exception.
Above is shown one of my long-time favorites among the items on offer in our Other Artists: Sculpture gallery. It’s a work by master carver Ned Archuleta in his preferred medium of pink alabaster, a spare and highly stylized buffalo. I wrote at some length about this piece a couple of years ago, when I noted that its slightly abstract yet still wholly recognizeable form was accented by a stone as sacred to some of our peoples as Buffalo’s spirit is itself: His horns are made of pipestone, a sacred substance used in the creation of calumets and canupas. You can read more about it, as well as the history and geography of pipestone deposits and the variation between sources and use, here.
It’s not just our older, established artisans who find inspiration in Buffalo. One of our younger artists, Jeremy Gomez, created his first buffalo a couple of years ago, a small sculpture mounted on a beautiful piece 
of cedar. In this instance, the animal served not merely as a representation of Buffalo generally, but of the White Buffalo specifically, thanks to the stone he chose for it: spiderweb alabaster, snowy white with a spiderweb matrix of rich brown and golden bronze siltstone. [We’ll get to the subject of the White Buffalo in a few moments.]
This piece was a departure for Jeremy, who previously had carved mostly fetish-sized works and small jewelry items. This work, however, was Buffalo fully realized: standing strong and firm upon the red cedar, his great hump and beard fully articulated, and possessed of a glorious pair of horns carved separately out of local Pilar slate, charcoal gray shot through with the shimmer of mica indigenous to the earth of this area. It made for a striking spirit, one that seemed to embody the very winter season in which he was created.
Jeremy follows in the footsteps of his late uncle, Emerson Gomez, who was one of Wings’s distant cousins but close frien
ds. Emerson had long since developed his own signature style, and he carved primarily in pipestone and particularly in Pilar slate. Under his skilled hands, this local variety of slate turned into something positively ethereal: the gr
ay stone, rich with a smooth texture simultaneously reminiscent of both velvet and silk; the blood-red matrix deep within the stone summoned to the fore; the pyrite given free rein to glow throughout the surface of the stone.
A few years ago, Wings removed a pair of Emerson’s works from his own private collection and put them up for sale. They weren’t here long. Both appear at left, and both paid tribute to Buffalo, albeit in different ways. Of the two pictured, the one on the right was a more classic representation of the great animal, summoned entirely from a chunk of Pilar slate with fully realized facial features, horns, hump, and coat, mounted on a lightly polished slab of spiderweb alabaster. The other one was more symbolic: a melding of the images of Buffalo and Eagle into one powerful spirit being, the eagle’s head emerging from one side even as the buffalo’s face made itself known on the other. Just above at right you can see the other side of Buffalo’s face, arising out of the sculpture’s stem. He gave this one a pair of horns carved out of a beautiful specimen of pale gold alabaster, half-translucent and ashimmer with metallic minerals, then mounted the entire piece on a slab of the same glowing alabaster.
Speaking of grays, one of our most substantive incarnations of Buffalo came in the form of the gray stone specimen immediately above. It was carved by Paul Dancebow, one of Wings’s cousins, out of charcoal gray steatite he had imported specially from Canada. Steatite is simply another word for soapstone, and this chunk was spectacular: It’s a relatively soft stone, susceptible to carving tools, and Paul texturized it thoroughly, turning face, beard, and hump a speckled salt-and-pepper combination of dark gray and white. He left eyes, horns, and muzzle the same smooth charcoal shade as the body; the body itself was a wonder, the stone both cool to the touch and yet warm, seeming both wet and dry at the same time, as soapstone is wont to do. Paul named the piece Laying-Down Buffalo, and the great animal appeared so relaxed and happy, so content, with his upturned face and upturned smile, that he made me think of Ferdinand, the gentle bull who wanted nothing more than to sit in the shade and smell the flowers. This bull buffalo now resides with a very dear friend who lives not far from us, who holds a special place in her heart for these big beautiful creatures.
Most people probably don’t realize that buffalo were very much an indigenous part of the habitat and lifeways of the peoples of this area, and of the Upper Midwestern lands that are my own home. Hollywood has turned the buffalo into a creature of the Plains, curtailing its range and reach in ways that badly misrepresent their actual population and location on this continent. Still, in the modern mind, they are mostly identified with the peoples of the Northern Plains. One of the artists whose work we have long carried hails from those environs, although he lives here now, and while he began carving mostly horses, a couple of years ago, he provided us with a pair of buffalo.
Randy Roughface is Ponca; his ancestors were originally from what is now northern Nebraska, before being forcibl
y marched southward to Oklahoma to be interned on reservation land there. He has relatives in both Oklahoma and South Dakota, but he is married to a Taos Pueblo woman and makes his home here now. He specializes in vintage-style carving, which, as I noted last week, is one that produces work resembling the sparer style and simpler lines of older carvings created before the advent of modern power tools. It’s a method that allows the stone to speak, and the spirit within it;
it doesn’t get caught up in extraneous detail. Randy has developed into a master of the technique. Two years ago, he brought us a selection of new carvings that included his more customary horses, a turtle, an eagle, and the pair of buffalo shown here, all coaxed from Pilar slate. He had come into possession of an unusually colorful specimen of the slate, one in which gray was less the color of the stone than a shade that underlay it. Most of the stone appeared more mulberry-colored, tinged with hints of brick red; a couple of pieces were a rich dark brown the color of coffee. Among the mulberry-hued specimens were the buffalo: a small fetish-sized one designed to be held in the hand, above at left; and the large, solid, substantial spirit shown at right, one with a high forehead, a long beard, a luxuriantly draped hump, and a twitching tail. The miniature is in our private collection, along with a miniature horse and a small orange alabaster heart, gifts for Wings and for me, respectively. The one on the left now belongs to the same friend who owns the steatite buffalo shown above.
Not all figurative artists are carvers, however. That’s especially true here at Taos Pueblo, where many of the artists who work in the indigenous mica clay specialize in figurative works.
An example is Benito Romero, who years ago created whole series of medicine fetishes, one of hump-backed bears and the other of tiny buffalo, out of the Pueblo’s famed micaceous clay. Originally, we had a shelf’s worth of each; by now, all that remains is this one small medicine buffalo, made of shimmery red clay and bearing a bundle of sinew and beads and feathers and quills and a tiny rosette.
Buffalo imagery in clay work is not limited to fetish-style works, either. Jessie Marcus is known for combining both pottery and figurative work into one compact form.
Jessie creates all sorts of pottery, but she has developed a specialty in the spirit mugs (or, as some refer to them, small spirit bowls) like the one you see above. I’ve written before at some length about the various uses of spirit bowls and plates, a long and time-honored tradition that crosses cultural lines, found in one form or another in many parts of Indian Country. A little over three years ago, Jessie created a whole series of these small mugs for us, each formed around the base of a small pottery bowl, with one side extending upward into a human or animal figure. These figures, which were wholly a part of the bowl, included male and female elders, lovers, mother and child pairs, singers, even a pair of matched horses . . . and a series of Buffalo Dancers.
You’ll recall that I mentioned above that in some cultures, there are male dancers who, at ceremonial or other events, will don an actual buffalo’s head and horns, with the curly mane of the hump stretching down the back, and dance in Buffalo’s honor. Jessie created a whole series of spirit mugs, each of which was topped by the head and shoulders of a Buffalo Dancer. Each was unique, but wholly traditional. We have four remaining in inventory, including the one pictured above.
Part of the point of the Buffalo Dance is to pay tribute to the spirit of the animal: to give thanks for all that it gives to us, in both tangible and symbolic terms; to recognize and acknowledge Buffalo’s courage and stamina, its willingness to stand strong and move steadfastly forward. All of these are traits that the people should aspire to emulate, all aspects of what we might call going well through life, living life in a good way. That means living a life of spiritual strength and courage, of cultivating a strong heart, of approaching life and our world and those with whom we share it with a good heart.
I’ve written about the connection between Buffalo and the idea of having a good heart, a strong heart, one that walks in the proper way, here:
It’s one of those beings who, for many of our peoples, has historically blessed us with all of the necessities of life: food; drink; shelter; clothing; medicine; art; security. In the old days, before the wanton colonial slaughter of Buffalo’s once-vast numbers, he was an elder brother, a relative, one who lent his strength and great heart to the people in untold ways metaphorical and literal.
An adult buffalo’s massive size is enough to give rise to the notion of great-heartedness; clearly, it’s an animal of great physical power and strength and substance. An entire herd of them can fill one’s whole field of vision, and when the herd is on the move, nothing stands in its way. Indeed, there’s an old traditional story about how Buffalo got his hump, as a penalty from Spirit for his continual practice of engaging in headlong flight across the prairie, heedlessly destroying the ground nests of certain birds and other small creatures in the process. The hump was his reminder of the need for humility and care. It’s a lesson from which humans could learn a great deal: that great strength must be tempered with compassion, great power with humility. Another way of putting it is that when one acts, one must do so with a good heart.
But Buffalo’s raw physical strength is not the only way in which indigenous notions of great-heartedness manifest in his being. It’s a concept that may be taken in very literal terms. After all, one of our peoples’ traditional principles is to let nothing go to waste. This is exemplified in traditional hunting practices, in which the meat was used entirely; the blood had its own purpose; the hide, horns, and hooves given over to clothing, shelter, weaponry, and art; and sundry parts of the animal turned into medicine. Even today, these practices continue, sometimes only ceremonially, sometimes daily on a practical level. Have you ever eaten buffalo heart? We have. It was a gift from the proprietor of The Bison Project at Picuris Pueblo many years ago, when we purchased a substantial amount of meat to set aside for the coming winter. If ever there were a sense in which the phrase “a strong heart” applies literally to Buffalo, this is it.
But perhaps more important is the metaphorical, symbolic sense of the phrase. At the same time as the agents and forces of colonialism were busily engaged in an all-out campaign to exterminate our peoples, so, too, were the same agents and forces busily exterminating our Buffalo brethren. And on that front, they very nearly succeeded. Some of the most painful photos from our peoples’ collective history, for me, are those of our elder brothers’ dead bodies, the carcasses thrown carelessly into a pile stacked a couple of stories high, with white men standing triumphantly atop their desecrated mountain of “trophies.” It hurts my own heart to see the needless, heedless, wanton slaughter.
And yet, like us, they remain. The herds are getting help, true, but their spirits are and were strong and determined, and however few their numbers at times, they did not succumb entirely to the forces arrayed against their very existence.
That is a strong heart.
Is it any wonder that this magnificent creature has become an intertribal symbol of survival in the face of genocide, of existential triumph, of the most visible manifestation of what a great strong heart can accomplish?
It is this aspect of Buffalo’s essential nature that Wings seeks to capture in his own work. I’ve written about it before, and specifically in the context of his signature series of Buffalo pins and pendants:
Wings has done a “Buffalo” series, in pendants and pins, for more than a decade, probably closer to two. They all come from a similar template, yet each is unique — one of the advantages of creating everything by hand. But beyond normal variation, he also varies the stampwork to create the detail; this one’s curly-haried hump is fashioned via hundreds of individual strikes with a tiny jeweler’s hammer. Most of them get a version of the heartline so popular in Southwestern Indian art, but these are usually double-terminated, sometimes winding gently across the surface of the animal’s body, sometimes taking on the sharper, more powerful pattern of the lightning bolts tossed by Thunderbird. Around here, the line itself is variously called a “heartline,” “a breathline,” or a “lifeline,” depending on the artist’s choice of terminology, but his are always a heartline, with all the symbolism that the word implies.
Symbolically, spiritually, Buffalo is perhaps the animal most associated with the idea of heart. It’s fitting that he would create them almost exclusively with a heartline running the length of their bodies, and a double-terminated one, too: a recognition that Buffalo takes in the heart, the courage, the identity, the love of the world, and in turns sends its own out into that same world to help maintain its balance.
But Buffalo manifests in other ways in his silverwork beyond straightforward figurative representations. Above, I mentioned the story of the Sacred White Buffalo, a prophecy that belongs to the Oceti Sakowin (otherwise known as the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation). In the past, I’ve written here about the role the symbol of the white buffalo plays in our intertribal identity:
Originally, of course, the symbolic meaning comes from the peoples of the Northern Plains — specifically, the peoples of the various Sioux Nations. It is an integral part of their cultural and spiritual traditions, and is rooted in an ancient prophecy given to the people by White Buffalo Calf Woman, a spirit being who brought them the sacred pipe of the same name, and brought them hope in time of genocide. [Note: There is actually very little on the Web about the symbolism of the white buffalo that is not utterly inappropriate, in every sense of that term. Most of it is written by non-Indians appropriating stealing the sacred stories and symbols for their own fraudulent self-promotion, and you will never see that sort of sacrilege linked on this site. But for a contemporary view that bridges both science and the sacred, written by a Native author, go here.]
Today, like that of Bald Eagle, the symbolism of the Sacred White Buffalo has been adopted as an intertribal symbol: in this case, of indigenous independence. Tribal nations all over the continent honor the symbolism and find hope in it, even where it is not a part of the a particular nation’s historical culture and traditions. This is certainly true of Southwestern peoples, for whom Buffalo (ordinary buffalo) still plays a central role in traditional lifeways and foodways. And so many of the artists whose work we carry pay homage to this magnificent and powerful animal spirit, adopting the imagery in painting, sculpture, drum-making, and other art forms. Wings sometimes uses Sacred White Buffalo turquoise and white buffalo magnesite in his silversmithing.
The bracelet shown immediately above is an example of White Buffalo magnesite. So, too, is the one shown directly below:
I’ve written about the differences between Sacred White Buffalo turquoise and White Buffalo magnesite at length here a number of times. Wings has a very small amount of what we believe to be the turquoise, and when I wrote about it as part of our Turquoise Tuesday series here two years ago, I noted its value in ways that transcend money:
It is not, however, the primary reason that we choose to use the stone’s full name: “Sacred White Buffalo turquoise.” After all, we use the full name when referring to the pretender stone, a form of magnesite, as well. No, for us, it’s what the name means. I’ve written here in the past about the prophecy of the Sacred White Buffalo given to peoples of the Northern Plains, and how the animal that embodies it has become an existential symbol of hope and survival for all of our peoples. To us, none of the descriptors is dispensable. The stone is rare, yes, but it is also named for the spirit animal of that particular ancient message, and each part of the name is essential: Buffalo himself, in the prophecy, will necessarily be white to be the sacred animal, and the whole point of the lesson is that he is sacred. So each of the three names is essential, an integral part of the stone’s identity, just as it is of the animal for which it is named. It is why you will never see us refer to it by any shorthand. [It also has the effect of keeping one on the straight and narrow with regard to stone identification; it’s much more difficult to blur a stone’s origins if it must match up with all three parts of the name.]
It’s also why this stone will likely remain a nugget. The true value, to us, is in the stone itself, not in what it can be cut up to sell.
. . .
On the rare occasion that one comes across genuine Sacred White Buffalo turquoise, it’s truly a find. For some, that would mean putting it up on the auction block to obtain the highest possible price for it.
For us, it’s something to be kept in its natural state, to be valued for itself, and to be honored as a symbol of an old, old story, a prophecy, a promise of existential sovereignty and independence.
For some, the symbolism of the Sacred White Buffalo is itself transcendent: It is the archetype of Buffalo’s spirit, the most sacred incarnation of the animal.
But for us, it’s not a distinction that has personal significance beyond the intertribal symbolism that I’ve already discussed. Buffalo, whatever the color of his coat, is a spirit sacred in its own way. It’s also one more plait in the braid that we call the sacred hoop of life: a spirit that connects us with the ancestors, and with the generations still unborn.
In this place, we are already in the process of changing seasons, an entire month early. We are entering what I have always regarded as the season of the Buffalo: Indian summer into autumn. Winter is just around the corner. With that in mind, I want to close our discussion of this beautiful animal, and of his role in Native art, with a graphic representation — a small painting by Frank Rain Leaf, one of Wings’s “brothers” in the traditional way.
I wrote about the connection to these great creatures that this season holds for me two years ago to the week:
I’m not entirely sure why, but this time of year, to me, is the time of the Buffalo. My own people are in the Ricing Moon now, with the Leaves Turning Moon just peeking over the horizon, due to arrive in a week or so. But I’ve always associated late summer and early autumn with the ranging of the buffalo. Perhaps it’s an unconscious association with an image permanently etched in my memory: About this time several years ago, we traveled up to Picuris to buy buffalo meat from the Pueblo’s Bison Project. We were lucky enough to be there at the end of the day, and as we returned to our vehicle, the herd came thundering over the hill from the meadow, headed into the fenced area for their evening feeding. Adults and calves alike, running at top speed in the slanting late-day sunlight, their dark brown curls contrasting with the lush green grass. It touched a chord of ancestral memory so deep I felt the drumbeat of their hooves throughout my body, and I felt tears welling as I gazed at them through the eyes of our grandparents. To the buffalo, they were coming home after a day out grazing. To me, they were coming home to a place of historical memory deep in my soul, and so was I.
For me, for us, the indigenous art of Buffalo is the art of a strong heart.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
