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| The American Bison on exhibit at The State Museum of Pennsylvania |
This week’s blog deals with the
presence of bison in Pennsylvania during prehistoric and early historic times. The
debate has been going on for over a century. Research on bison or buffalo in
Pennsylvania can be organized into two groups; a few scientific studies note
that there are no known skeletal remains from Pennsylvania. This is in contrast
to numerous reports of bison, sometimes numbering in the thousands, by early
explorers and hunters and at least ten referenced place names, suggesting the
animal as the origin for these names.
As
background, The American Bison Association reports that the so-called American
buffalo is not a true buffalo, i.e. the Cape buffalo or water buffalo of Africa
and Asia, but rather, it is related to the European bison. Scientifically, they
are classified as Bison bison bison, part of the Bovidae family along with the
cow. However, the literature seems to use bison and buffalo interchangeably.
They once roamed the Great Plains of the American West numbering as many as 60
million. However, by 1889, hide hunters had catastrophically reduced the herds,
down to 635 wild bison according to Hornaday (1889:525). Although, their range
extends east of the Mississippi, the numbers are far smaller. They are very
large animals with females averaging about 1000 pounds and males about 1500-2000
pounds (American Bison Association brochure n.d.). They are very fast on their
feet and can withstand severe cold and snow.
The most
popular references to hunting bison in Pennsylvania are by Thomas Ashe, Travels
in America in 1806 and a 60-page book by Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker (1919),
A Pennsylvania Bison Hunt. Ashe describes detailed migration routes
involving thousands of animals in central and western Pennsylvania. Guilday
(1963:136) quotes a long passage from Ashe who relates a story of a man whose
cabin was knocked down by a large herd and in retaliation, the man killed
600-700 animals. Guilday (1963:176) goes on to state “In view of the vagueness
of the locality and the known propensity of Thomas Ashe for colorful
embellishment without regard for the fact, this oft-quoted account cannot be
considered seriously.”
Shoemaker
(1915) wrote in detail of a bison hunt near Weikert, Union County during the
winter of 1799-1800. According to Shoemaker (1915:31-35) a herd of 300 animals
stampeded through a cabin, killing a mother and three children. The father and
a group of approximately 50 others, tracked them down and killed them all. Guilday
(1963) and Williams et al (1985) label these as an outrageous exaggeration.
Shoemaker actually defined a new species separated from the western bison,
Bison, americanus pennsylvanicus. However, since his definition was not based
on physical remains but only hearsay and folklore, it was “considered invalid
by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature” (Williamson et al
1985:173). Considering the number of large animals involved in these stories,
there should be physical skeletal remains, but none can be documented.
Turnbaugh
(1977:70-71) also reviews the reports of bison in the West Branch of the
Susquehanna drainage. Specifically citing the fanciful descriptions of Colonel
Henry W. Shoemaker (1919) and Thomas Ashe (1808). he agrees with Guilday (1963)
and Frank G. Roe (1971) that there is no collaborating evidence to support
these stories.
Traditionally,
the last bison shot in Pennsylvania was killed by Colonel John Kelly in the
1790s on the McClister farm 5 miles from Lewisburg (thus the mascot for nearby
Bucknell University is the “bison”). There are two others who claim to have
killed the last bison. Williamson et al. (1985:173) reviews the conflicting
information concerning the last bison killed in Pennsylvania, concluding that
the information cannot be trusted. The dates fall between 1790 and 1810. These
would have been spectacular trophies, yet no physical remains are known.
Another argument
for the presence of bison are the numerous place names in Pennsylvania such as
Buffalo Creek in Washington County; Buffalo Creek in Butler and Armstrong
counties; Buffalow Creek in Union County along with Buffalo Township; Big
Buffalow Creek in Perry County along with Buffaloe Hill and Little Buffalow
Creek; Buffaloe Run near Bedford; Buffaloe Lick Creek in Somerset County and finally Buffaloe
Run in Centre County.
Gail
Gibson (1969) examined 18th century maps and traced the origin of
these place names. For the most part, she found that what are now labeled as
Buffalo Creek, Run or Lick, originally had other names un-related to the
animal. So, for example, Buffalo Creek in Union Count was originally named
Buffellow Creek possibly refereeing to an individual rather than the animal.
This is almost certainly the case for Buffalo Creek in Butler and Armstrong
counties where it was originally the name of a village, Buffelors, and, again,
not representing the animal. In addition, she relates the account of Thomas
Penn purchasing a bull buffalo in 1733, but there is no mention of where this
animal was acquired.
However,
her last example consists of two independent references to hunting buffalo in
the Monongahela Valley south of Brownsville, Pennsylvania. She feels these are
reliable reports. However, she concludes that they may be false, and she
returns to the conclusions reached by Guilday that there is no physical
evidence in the form of bones from archaeological contexts and no reports of Native
Americans using products rendered from these animals. Therefore, they may have
been present but in very low numbers or absent altogether.
As for skeletal remains of bison in
Pennsylvania, there are only a handful of reports. In their listing of
vertebrate fauna from the Pleistocene (i.e. before 10,000 years ago) to the
present, Toomey and Fay (1994:Appendix 1) cite only two examples: one is
Pleistocene in age from the Frankstown cave in Blair County and considering
Pleistocene bison remains in the neighboring states, this is not surprising.
The second collection, consisting of four bone fragments, are from the Late Woodland
period Martin site in Fayette County (Gilmore 1946). Guilday (1963:135) rejects
these as bison. The bone was not saved and Guilday thinks it is an intrusive
cow bone because other cow bones were found on the site and no other bison
bones have been found in the region.
This is a
problem with some early archaeological collections in that bone was recorded
but not always saved for future identification. Augustine (1938:10) reports
fragmentary bones of “woods bison” from a Late Woodland pit at the Emerick site.
However, it is unclear whether this collection was ever curated and therefore
not available to confirm this identification. James P. Bressler reports bison
bone from a midden at the Bull Run site in Lycoming County. The collection
included a bison skull along with one of the bones imbedded by an arrow.
Unfortunately, the bone was broken when a crew member tried to remove the arrow
point and, again, the material is not available to confirm the field
identification.
Guilday
has reviewed all of the reports in the Carnegie collection, and most of the
reported bison skeletal remains from Pennsylvania and the surrounding region. He
reports that bison remains were “conspicuously absent” from the Buffalo and the
Mt. Carbon sites in West Virginia where approximately 100,000 bones were
analyzed. He also rejects the bison metacarpal from the Beech Bottom Mound,
West Virginia. The bone was not saved and was probably cow. However, he
recognized a bison bone beamer “made of thoracic vertebral spines” recovered
from the Madisonville site in western Ohio. Guilday (1963) supports finds in
Ohio, New York, Maryland and the Carolinas, indicating bison may have been on
the fringes of Pennsylvania.
To
summarize, Gibson (1969), Guilday (1963) and Williams et al. (1985) have
examined the reports by early hunters and place names and generally conclude
that there is little collaborating evidence to support bison in post
Pleistocene Pennsylvania. They all make the argument that bison are grazers and
not suited to the eastern forests that did not support the buffalo’s ecological
requirements. Witthoft (1967:17) reminds us that there is no ethnographic or
historical evidence that Native Americans traded buffalo products to the
Europeans or that they had historical or religious traditions that reference that
animal. However, based on a recent discussion with Joe Stahlman (2020) THPO for
the Seneca, the Seneca have a tradition of hunting buffalo along the Erie Lake
plain and even burning the forest to keep it in a grassland for the buffalo.
Williams
et al. (1985:176) concludes that there is no physical “evidence to support the
occurrence of bison in Pennsylvania”. However, the number of reports and place
names suggest they probably occurred, but in low numbers. Toomey and Fay
(1994:44) reach a similar conclusion that bison may have been present in parts
of Pennsylvania up to 1800, but based on “the lack of remains, were very rare
or absent from Pennsylvania during most of the Holocene.” In the last sentence
of Guilday (1963:138), he states “But, judging from the scanty historical
record, the lack of archaeological finds and what we know of the buffalo’s
ecological requirements, it must have been scarce in the area.“
This
author takes a “cup half full” perspective, agreeing with the above conclusions
but doubtful that bison were here at all. However, it is difficult to prove the
negative – bison are not here because we haven’t found any skeletal remains –
maybe they will be uncovered in the next excavation.
Bibliography
Ashe, Thomas
1808 Travels
in America Performed in 1806 for the Purpose of Exploring the Rivers Allegheny,
Monongahela, Ohio and Mississippi and Ascertaining the Produce and Condition of
their Banks and Vicinity. London
Augustine, Edgar E.
1938 Recent
Discoveries in Somerset County. Pennsylvania Archaeologist, 8(1):6-12.
Bressler, James P.
1980 Excavation
of the Bull Run site 36LY119. Pennsylvania Archaeologist, 50(4):31-63
Gibson, Gail
1969 Historical
Evidence of the Buffalo in Pennsylvania, The Pennsylvania Magazine of
History and Biography, April, pp.151-160.
Gilmore, Raymond M.
1946 Mammals
in Archaeological sites from Southwestern Pennsylvania. Journal of Mammalogy
27:227-234.
Guilday, John E.
1963 Evidence
for Buffalo in Prehistoric Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Archaeologist
33:135-139.
1971 Biological
and Archaeological Analysis of Bones from a 17th Century Indian
Village (46 PU 31), Putnam County, West Virginia. Report of Archaeological
Investigation, Number 4, Editor Bettye J. Broyles, West Virginia Geological
and Economic Survey. Morgantown, West Virginia.
Hornaday, W. T.
1889 The
extermination of the American bison. Report to the United States Natural
History Museum 1886-87:iv + 369-548
Mattern, Billy N.
1993 Local
Buffalo – Fact or Fiction. Presented before the Snyder County historical
Society, March 23, 1993.
Roe, Frank G.
1971 The
North American Buffalo: Acritical Study of the Species in it Wild State.
University of Toronto Press. Toronto. Second Revised Edition.
Shoemaker, Henry W.
1915 A
Pennsylvania Bison Hunt. Middleburg Post Press.
Toomey, Richard S. and Leslie P. Fay
1994 The
Changing Vertebrate Fauna of Pennsylvania over the Pat 15,000 years in Volume
II, Paleoenvironmental and Paleoclimatic Reconstruction of Pennsylvania over
the Last 15,000 years. Edited by Frank J. Vento, submitted to the Bureau
for Historic Preservation, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
Turnbaugh, William A.
1977 Man
Land and Time. Unigraphic, Inc. Evansville, Indiana
Williams, Stephen L., Suzanne B. McLearen,
Marion A. Burgwin,
1985 Paleo-archaeological
and Historical Records of Selected Pennsylvania Mammals, Annuals of Carnegie
Museum 54(4):77-188.
Witthoft, John
1967 The
American Indian as Hunter. Harrisburg.
For more information, visit PAarchaeology.state.pa.us or the Hall of Anthropology and Archaeology at The State Museum of Pennsylvania .
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