Where the Buffalo Roam–Some Thoughts on Yellowstone NP
I left off my previous Yellowstone post with praise for our forebearers who had the foresight to protect our unique landscapes. But there is so much more to the story, so many lenses to look through and narratives to consider.
I would be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t try to un-muddle some of the more complicated thoughts and emotions I experienced in Yellowstone National Park. Because something can be both a triumph and a tragedy, and I think it’s important to consider both angles.
I think the story of the American West can be well summarized by a children’s movie: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
If you’re unfamiliar, it follows a mustang as he grows up in the unsettled west. Eventually, the horse encounters humankind and is captured by white settlers. He tries to escape many times, first from the army outpost, then from the railroad operation. Finally, the mustang breaks free with the help of a Lakota man and returns to the valley where he can run free.
The film, while a feel-good story, also demonstrates how white people felt entitled to the west. They saw a wild horse and they took it. They blew holes in mountain sides for train tracks so they could better access their land. So, while the mustang does run free at the end, the movie is bittersweet, because we know his freedom did not last. We know our country’s history is built on the exploitation of land and people.
Being in Yellowstone National Park stoked many of the same conflicting emotions. Like the mustang, I feel freedom and peace and wonder in nature, and that’s how I felt in Yellowstone, surrounded by vast stretches of land that are protected and valued. That have been protected since 1872.
But that is not the whole story.
National Parks remind me that once the whole west was as starkly beautiful and untouched by exploitation. But no longer. Yellowstone reminds me how, then and now, control is everything. Not harmony. Control.
In 1872, the land of Yellowstone NP didn’t have to be protected from Native American tribes who had called it home for centuries. It only needed to be protected from us. And yet, indigenous people were forced and tricked into vacating the area to achieve yet another piece of the white government’s vision.
There is always more than one side to every story, and I know that if National Parks had not been protected, they would probably look like Vail and Jackson, or whole sides of mountains would have caved in like sand castles from mining operations. The alternative–not having them at all–is worse.
But I stand in Yellowstone before the Dragon’s Mouth Spring, or I lift my camera to snap a photo of a baby bison, or I enjoy my breakfast on a folding chair outside of the van, and I can’t help but think of both the beauty and wonder that I always find in nature, and of the ways that National Parks are also a human device devised to control nature and indigenous peoples. Thus, there is regret tied up in the wonder of it all.
And I never want to forget that regret.
The Bison: A Case Study
The bison is perhaps the most well known animal in Yellowstone. They are easy to spot, being that they are ginormous. It is difficult to imagine hunting one with a spear, but sobering to think of settlers coming in with rifles. Buffalo Bill, who helped create the myth of the American West through his Wild West show, is known for killing 4,280 bison in an eighteen month span, which is what earned him his nickname. That’s about 237 bison a month.
Settlers shot them from train windows, making massive sport of killing animals the Native American populations relied heavily upon. The U.S. Army was tasked with getting Native Americans off the plains and into reservations, but as long as bison roamed the hills, the Native Americans weren’t going anywhere. “Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone,” are the so-called words of Army Colonel Richard Dodge.
Bison were hunted to near extinction, slaughtered for sport, for their furs (and nothing else), and to control indigenous peoples. Today, a small number thrive in Yellowstone National Park.
But the narrative of the bison is very different today. In 2016, the bison was made the national mammal of the United States. This was done as a celebration of human efforts in rebuilding the bison population in Yellowstone. But it’s also problematic that the US has chosen a national symbol representative of a west that the American government destroyed. The bison wouldn’t have had to be rehabilitated and protected if they had not been slaughtered in the hundreds of thousands. I’m glad the bison are back and protected, but it is a little disconcerting to first create your own problem and then praise yourself for fixing it.
Final Thoughts
I place extremely high value on our natural spaces whether they be National Parks, National Forests, BLM land, or private. And I am incredibly grateful for the existence of these spaces and the preservation of these animal species. However, to simply be grateful isn’t enough for me, not when there are so many discounted narratives and dark moments connected to these lands. We also have to be aware.
It is important to acknowledge the full range of perspectives, opinions, and narratives that surround the incredibly complex historical and modern decisions regarding the west and national parks. I have to be sensitive to the fact that even though national parks are a “win” for most people, they were not (and probably still are not) the perfect solution. And, in the end, the United States’s dominant story of the west was written by entitled humans.
So I’ll leave you with this: visit Yellowstone yourself, and maybe use your camera lens for fabulous photos and to look at things from multiple angles.
In case you missed it…
Read Yellowstone Part 1: Cruising the Crater of a Super Volcano
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