“The Indians they needed food and some skins for a roof; they only took what they needed, baby, millions of buffalo were the proof."
- Great White Buffalo/Ted Nugent
The portrait seen here was painted for me by our friend, Gary Parisi.
Do you have an animal you like? Not a specific animal like your dog, but a kind of animal? One you think is cool - eagle? fox? wolf? horse? gorilla? antelope?
Mine, as friends know, is the buffalo, or the American bison as I think is technically correct, although I never call them that. People ask me why I like them. I guess it's because they're a symbol of the untamed old west which I have a fondness for. Growing up, our generation was saturated with westerns on TV and in movies. For me, that influence never rubbed off.
Not long ago, I was talking to a twenty-something fella. It came out that he'd never seen a western and only vaguely knew the idea of what it was. I had to sit down.
In any case, the buffalo, that's my animal. At the turn of the 19th Century there were around 60 million buffalo across the American west. By 1889, after a genocide conducted for their furs and for sport, fewer than a thousand remained. A near incomprehensible atrocity.
Thanks to conservation efforts starting in the early 20th Century, the buffalo was brought back from near extinction to about 500,000 today. If you've been to Yellowstone, Custer State Park in South Dakota, Shelby Farms in Memphis or other places where large herds thrive, maybe you've experienced how majestic they can be.
Rockers like to put the buffalo in their band's name. Check it out: Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Tom, Donna the Buffalo, Grant Lee Buffalo, The White Buffalo, Buffalo Traffic Jam, Lord Buffalo, King Buffalo, Phantom Buffalo, The Last Bison, Bison Bone, King Bison and just Bison. Whew.
Is there any other critter that gets that kind of recognition?
On the subject, sweet singin' Jimmy Lafave, wordsmith James McMurtry and, of course, Ted would want to have his say. It just so happens it was recorded in Austin, TX in July, 1976.