To mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, we’re cataloging 25 objects that define the country’s history.
Visitors to the Smithsonian will soon come face to face with the fossilized remains of a giant from North America’s past. A six-foot-wide skull that is tens of thousands of years old — nicknamed “Junior” — is the centerpiece of a new exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History tracing the rise, near extinction and comeback of the American bison. The exhibit opens May 7.
Kirk Johnson, the museum’s director, spoke with Here & Now’s Deborah Becker about what makes the skull so special.
How did the Smithsonian get the skull?
“It’s from the American Falls Reservoir in Idaho, which is known to be a source for these gigantic bison skulls. And when we say gigantic, they really are immense. They’re much bigger than modern bison. Six feet is on the small end. They got as much as eight or nine feet wide. And when you see these things, you think you’re looking at the tusks of mammoths or mastodons.
“We packed it very carefully, put it in a wooden crate and shipped it. And it’s not petrified. It’s actually still the original bone with some teeth. So it is somewhat delicate.”
What was the role of bison among Native American tribes as animals and humans evolved in North America?
“Bison came into North America from Asia sometime after 200,000 years ago. So they’re here first. Then humans got here at least 23,000 years ago. So for a while, there were bison in North America that lived happily with mammoths and mastodons and giant sloths.
“Then people got here, and people began to hunt bison amongst all the other ice age animals like mammoths and mastodons. Then the mammoths, mastodons and the giant bison went extinct, leaving the modern bison and the people. Today, the bison is the largest land mammal in North America.”
How are bison doing population-wise right now?
“Right now, there’s about half a million bison, but most of them are in managed herds. There are not a lot of wild bison. There’s about 5,000 of them in Yellowstone National Park. So they’re kind of functionally extinct, but they’re widespread.
“But if you dial the clock back to 1800, there were probably as many as 40 million bison on the plains. So it’s a relatively complicated story that has many chapters to it.”
Bison are often confused with buffalo. How do you describe the difference?
“This is one of the great name confusions of all time. Bison and buffalo are the same animal here in North America. There are water buffaloes and cape buffaloes in Africa and Asia. So there’s a larger group of animals, but this includes cows, too.
“From a scientific point of view, bison, buffalo and cows are all closely related. So everyone is confused about this topic, and no one should be; they’re the same animal in North America. It makes no difference what you call them.”
Why is the story of the bison important to telling the story of America?
“Bison are incredibly widely spread across the iconography of our country. You can go anywhere you want, whether it’s Buffalo Wild Wings, the Buffalo Bills, the city of Buffalo or Buffalo Bill Cody. I mean, anywhere you go, you’ll see the bison icon.
“But it has this really checkered history because they were incredibly abundant when the nation was formed, and they too roamed almost all over the entire country. I mean, [former President] George Washington shot a bison in West Virginia in the 1700s. So they were everywhere, but they were kind of victims of the westward expansion. There had also been Native Americans living on the land, but they were pushed aside, the bison whippers aside. And you have this incredible growth of a nation, but it comes at the cost of the Native Americans and the native wildlife.
“It wasn’t until the 1900s that we realized that we shouldn’t cause the extinction of wildlife. We should preserve them. So that led to [a] conservation movement in the early 1900s, which led to the rebound of wildlife and the slow rebound of the bison. So it’s a story of what this nation did and how it recovered from what it has been doing. And so to see bison, they’re a part of that story.
“We had a woman from the Blackfeet Nation in Montana help us dedicate several bronze bison statues on the steps of the Natural History Museum in April. Her tribe are bison people. They have lived with bison for over 8,000 years. And she said that her parents and grandparents had never seen the bison when they were growing up. There’s this thing that defined their culture that was completely wiped out from where they lived. And so for her to see the return of the bison, it’s a story of painful history and a pretty great comeback.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Will Walkey produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Catherine Welch. Walkey also produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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