North American Bison: Culinary History

The bison is often called a buffalo, but the name is not interchangeable. A buffalo is not a bison, which is actually an Old World animal. It was the early European settlers travelling to America that coined the misnomer. They saw what they thought was a buffalo, and named it thusly. 

It’s hard to imagine today, but the continent of North America was almost 70% covered in bison. These animals would wander the plains in groups of up to 40, gathering into larger herds to migrate or seek out new sources for food.

Bison were essential to the survival of Native Americans. Beyond their meat, bison bones could be fashioned into tools. Their hides could provide warmth, and meat could be cured for the long winters. Meat would be cooked by the hunters fresh, while the women would dry out some of the meat in salts. Sometimes, these hunters would even use the hide to make a kind of cauldron they could use to slow-cook the meat. 

The bison was, for lack of a better term, easy to shoot. Almost absurdly so. The animal is large and docile, so hunters found it simple to kill one. As a result, bison were all but extinct from the eastern half of America by 1849. The meat was highly valued for its fresh taste, which would have been a welcome change of pace to covered wagon travelers subsisting off of dried pork jerky.