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Hidden History: Florida's Bison [1]
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Date: 2022-12-15
Mention the word “Buffalo” (or, more correctly, “Bison”— “Buffalo” being reserved for the Asian and African Water Buffalos), and most people picture a thundering herd of shaggy creatures crossing the plains of South Dakota. But in historical times there were Bison living in the Eastern United States as well, and they have now been reintroduced to areas where they had previously been exterminated—including a herd in Florida.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
Payne’s Prairie. These are free-roaming wild horses.
Although Bison are usually associated with North America, their deep ancestry is actually in Asia, and is closely tied with that of the ancient Aurochs of the genus Bos—the ancestors of today's domestic cattle. The American Bison, the European Bison, the ancient Aurochs, and today's cattle all share genes and are capable of interbreeding, and teasing out their tangled ancestry has been a challenge for paleontologists.
The common ancestor of Aurochs and Bison, though, seems to have lived in China about 9 million years ago. The earliest identifiable Bison fossils, Bison sivalensis, come from India during the early Pleistocene period just before the beginning of the last Ice Age, about 2.6 million years ago. Sometime around 200,000 years ago, before the land bridge between Siberia and Alaska became closed off by the most recent glaciations, the Asian species Bison priscus made its way into North America. In fact, there seem to have been several such waves of migration which took place each time the sea level dropped low enough to expose the Beringian land bridge.
During the course of the Ice Age, one of these species spread into Europe, where it evolved into the Wisent or European Bison, Bison bonasus, which appears about 12,000 years ago. The Wisent is genetically very close to the American species, and although most authorities accept that it is descended from an Asian migrant, there have also been arguments made that the European Bison is actually derived from a North American ancestor which back-migrated from Alaska to Asia and then made its way to Europe.
Upon reaching North America, the Bison radiated rapidly into a variety of new species, including Bison latifrons, a long-horned variety that remains the largest known species of Bison, and the somewhat smaller Bison antiquus. When human hunters entered North America from Asia, following the same path across Beringia that the Bison had, the several species of North American Bison which they found there became favored targets, and there have been many archaeological discoveries of hunted and butchered ancient Bison with stone Clovis or Folsom projectile points embedded in their skeletons.
By about 12,000 years ago, the modern Bison bison species had appeared. This was the smallest of the ancient Bison, being about one-fourth smaller than Bison antiquus, and genetic data indicates that it evolved from B antiquus, perhaps through an intermediary species known as Bison occidentalis. As the Ice Age glaciers retreated about 15,000 years ago, nearly all of the large Bison species disappeared—the victims of climate change and human hunters. Only the smallest of these, the modern North American Bison, survived. Over the next few thousand years, the American Bison itself split into two subspecies—the Plains Bison (Bison bison bison) and the more northern Woods Bison (Bison bison athabascae).
In the post-Ice Age world, the Bison quickly became the dominant land mammal of North America, ranging from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains all the way to the East Coast from New York to Florida and adapting to a variety of habitats. And the Bison remained favored targets of Native American hunters.
Then came the Europeans.
When the Spanish began exploring North America in earnest in the 1500s, they found Bison. The 1528 expedition led by Panfilo de Narvaez encountered Bison (which they referred to as vaca or “cows”) in what is now Louisiana, and were told that the animals were more common further north. In 1686, Marcos Delgado found Bison in northern Florida, as did Diego Pena in 1716.
When Dutch and English explorers reached what is now the northeastern US, they found Bison, and noted that the Native Americans living in the area were using buffalo hides as robes and blankets. One report describes Bison living near the Potomac River in Virginia in 1612.
In 1769 the famed frontiersman Daniel Boone described Bison herds in western Kentucky, while in that same year the Virginia planter (and future President) George Washington noted that he had killed a number of Bison in the Kanawha Valley in what is now West Virginia. The English explorer John Bartram reported finding Bison in north-central Florida in 1773.
While the Bison were ranging throughout the forested areas of eastern North America in historical times, their density was apparently never high. So when the slaughter began, carried out by gun-toting Europeans, the Bison didn't last long. By 1830, the animals had been completely exterminated everywhere east of the Mississippi River.
In the Great Plains which ran from Canada all the way to Texas, however, the great herds fared better, and estimates of the number of Bison that lived in these grasslands reach as high as 60 million.
This is the classic image that Americans have of “Buffalo”—immense herds of animals being hunted by Native Americans on horseback. In reality, the Plains Native Bison cultures are relatively recent. Although the horse had originally evolved in North America and migrated to Asia, it had become extinct in its homeland long before humans crossed the Beringian land bridge, and it wasn't reintroduced to the continent until the Spanish arrived in the 1500s. The Lakota Natives themselves originally lived around the Great Lakes, and were only pushed out onto the northern Plains by the Iroquois in the 17th century, in a conflict known as the “Beaver Wars”. It was only then that the Lakota adopted the horse and buffalo culture for which they are best-known. This way of life lasted for about 200 years before the United States, expanding relentlessly westward, destroyed the Native Americans it found there, and ruthlessly killed off the massive herds of Bison. By 1880 the once-numerous animals were on the verge of extinction.
Much of the effort to save the American Bison from oblivion is due to one man. When the Bronx Zoo opened in November 1899, William Temple Hornaday, who had already served at the Smithsonian Zoo in Washington DC, was hired on as Director. He had a particular interest in American Bison, which once covered the American Plains but which were now already in serious decline. With the help of Teddy Roosevelt, Hornaday formed the American Bison Society and set up a captive-breeding program at the Zoo. By 1907, captive-bred Bison from the Bronx Zoo were being released into the wild in several western National Parks to re-establish herds. Today, there are an estimated half a million Bison in the US and Canada. Nearly all of these are kept on private ranches as either tourist attractions or for commercial meat sales, but several wild herds have now been established in a number of National and State Parks.
Although nearly all of these conservation efforts have been focused on the Plains, there is also interest in re-establishing Bison in areas of the Eastern US where they had once historically ranged, including Florida. One such area is Payne’s Prairie Preserve State Park, a 22,000-acre patch of land near Gainesville that was established in 1971 as the state's first nature preserve.
In 1975, Tallahassee wildlife officials acquired ten Bison from the Wichita Wildlife Refuge in Nebraska and relocated them to Payne's Prairie in an effort to re-establish a free-roaming herd of Bison in Florida. (It is near the area where Bartram had seen Bison during his travels.) In addition, the Preserve became home to a group of wild horses, which share their habitat with the Bison.
The Bison adapted well to their former ancestral home, and today the herd numbers somewhere around 50 animals. There are hiking trails for visitors (although everybody is warned that the Bison are potentially dangerous and humans should keep their distance from them). There is also a 50-foot observation tower which overlooks some of the favored Bison and horse grazing spots. In 2018 there was a temporary escape when a falling tree knocked down a portion of the Preserve's fence, but Park Rangers were able to quickly herd the animals back home.
Alas, the Bison are very wary and prefer to stay away from humans. So although I have seen wild horses in the Preserve during several visits, I’ve never been able to glimpse the Bison.
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