It would probably be hard to convince anyone that the buffalo on the United States five-cent piece is not really a buffalo. Yet it’s a fact. The so-called American buffalo is not a true buffalo, but a bison.

It belongs, however, to the wild-ox family and so is a near relative of the true buffaloes, chiefly in their proportions and in having 14 pairs of ribs, not 13.

The American bison has huge shoulders and shaggy hair covering its head and forequarters. In comparison with the head and the forequarters, the rest of the body looks almost naked. Males are considerably larger than females. A bull may weigh as much as 900 kilograms.

To the Indians of the plains, the American buffalo meant food, clothing, and shelter. The buffalo furnished excellent meat, which the Indians ate not only fresh, but also sun-dried. The hides were made into winter clothes, tepees, horse trappings, shields, and coverings for boats. Even the bones, sinews, and horns were used.

The buffalo has had a narrow escape from extinction, which almost resulted from the butchery it suffered within a period of less than 20 years. Herds of buffaloes once roamed the region between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountains. But by 1800, there were almost no buffaloes east of the Mississippi.

The Western plains however, were still black with herds made up of thousands, sometimes millions, of buffaloes. The size of these herds was almost unbelievable. They covered the prairie as far as the eye could see. Steamboats on rivers were sometimes halted by swimming herds, and trains were stopped for hours while an army of these animals crossed the tracks.

Whole herds were shot by hunters to feed the thousands of men building the new railroads, and hundreds of thousands were killed for their hides alone. Between 1865 and 1875, some 2,000,000 buffalo hides each year were sold at about $1 apiece. By 1889, in the whole of North America, there were only 835 buffaloes at large and 256 in captivity! Today, there are about 15,000 buffaloes living in the United States and Canada.