Photo: Initiative Interns Darwin St.Clair (Eastern Shoshone) and Miles Daskivich (Northern Cheyenne) and Financial Director Xavier Micheal-Young (Seminole Nation of Florida).
Buffalo Nations
Buffalo Nations, those who rely on and have lived with massive Buffalo herds for millennia, understand their relationship with Buffalo as sacred reciprocity—the animals provide food, shelter, clothing, tools, and guidance, while Indigenous Peoples cultivate environments to create abundance for them and all living things. We have always learned from the Buffalo and rely on them for hundreds of different uses, making the relationship deeply symbiotic. Both the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone are Buffalo Nations. The Eastern Shoshone are literally known as Guchundeka’ or Buffalo Eaters.
Restoring Lifeways
One of the goals of restoring Tribal Buffalo is to establish and sustain a huntable population of Buffalo on Tribal lands, in order to maintain our food and lifeways. On the Wind River Indian Reservation, we have abundant Elk, Deer, Pronghorn Antelope, and Bighorn Sheep that are all protected by our Tribal game code, which allows for permitted hunting. We have always hunted except a brief period of time when wildlife was virtually wiped out by colonizers in the late 1800s, and when we were forced to stay on our reservation and “assimilate,” which meant relying on government rations that were sometimes rotten and inedible. Restoring Buffalo means restoring food sovereignty. We will always be able to feed ourselves and our community with Buffalo on our lands.
Cultural Field Harvest
Around 12 Buffalo are respectfully harvested each year for funerals, ceremonial occasions, or times of hunger within the community. It isn’t really a hunt; it is a harvest. Cultural field harvests are deeply respectful. We pray over the herd for days in advance, and a young bull will present itself on the harvest day. After ethically killing it, we use an advanced harvest trailer with refrigeration and our skilled staff and community members to field process the Buffalo.
Buffalo Hides Are as Important as They are Strong. Here’s Our Process.
Historically, a Buffalo hide was the very fabric that kept life together on the plains for Tribal Nations. Very literally. Buffalo hides were important in making the most essential items for everyday life – clothes, tipis, tools, and robes for warmth.
There are many steps that take a hide from the back of a Buffalo to the floor of a tipi, and without getting into excruciating detail, we will walk you through how we process hides using traditional and contemporary techniques.
Here at Buffalo camp we are still learning all the ways the Buffalo take care of us. Here is what we have learned about Buffalo hides!
Removing the Hide
This is the part of the process that requires a delicate touch and understanding of the anatomy of the Buffalo. The skin has to be cut around the hoofs and down the middle of the stomach. After that you are slowly cutting the connective tissue away from the meat and fat of the Buffalo.
For us here at the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, or WRTBI, small knives usually do the trick. Bigger knives don’t make your life easier. Decide beforehand if you want to keep the face on or off of the hide.
Tip: Keep your knives sharp! A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one.
Buffalo hides are large and heavy! According to WRTBI’s Buffalo hide expert Tahkoken Micheal-Lujan, if you are processing a bigger bull you can expect the hide to be approximately 150 pounds!
“But it really depends on the size of the Buffalo and if it’s a summer or winter hide,” Micheal said.
Winter hides are bigger, and have around 12,000 hairs per inch. They lose a lot of this hair in the spring and the hair is used in nests for birds.
Hanging the Hide
You can process the hide with the hair on or off, but for our purposes here we keep the hair on. For facilities with a large enough tub, this is the time to wash the hide with soap and water.
While some put the hide on a fleshing beam at this stage, to get some of the initial extra flesh and skin off, we usually jump straight to hanging the hide at this step.
You will need 400 yards of rope and your knife as you make incisions around the outer edge of the hide, one hole every 4 or 5 inches.
A frame big enough for a Buffalo can be hard to come by, here at WRTBI we have welded metal frames with sturdy eyelets to weave the rope through. But you can make these out of wood, and some have even made frames out of old trampolines.
Thread in and out the hide and through the eyes of the frame. As you get all the way around, you can pull the hide taught and get onto the really fun part.
Fleshing and Working the Hide
You can use a lot of different tools for fleshing but it’s important to pick one that works for you. You can use a pry-bar, old tilling disks, or a power washer, just as long as you are comfortable with it because this is the part that takes the longest.
Get the flesh off the hide, and get it till the skin is thin, and a light tan color.
Tip: Keep with it! If it dries out completely it makes the process harder.
Traditionally, both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho used Buffalo brains to tan their hides. You can use an egg mixture, and there are also kits you can buy with chemicals that do a good job as well.
The idea is to get your hide as soft as possible, so working the mixture into the hide is essential!
It might take several rounds of integrating the mixture into the hide depending on how well you fleshed the hide.
What Happens to the Buffalo Robes at Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative?
As you might imagine, Buffalo robes are extremely valuable and important because of our relationship with them and all that they give us. We do not sell them. But we have given out hides to community members experiencing grief, as well as our Tribal officials, and we keep many at Buffalo Camp to educate our youth.
Right now we are working to build more hide tanning capacity, so many of our hides are processed by local tanners.
Hide Facts
- It takes approximately 20 Buffalo hides to make one tipi.
- Buffalo hides were also used as the blankets that lined the floor of tipis.
- Raw hide is an extremely useful part of the hide tanning process that can be used to make parflesh or Buffalo boxes – these are carrying cases that have structure. Think cardboard box, before there was cardboard.
- Buffalo hides are one of the hardest to tan because of their sheer size! An option is to cut the hide in half and work on both sides individually to make it easier. Then when they are done, you can sew the two halves back together.
Recommended Reading: Horn to Hoof: The Many Uses of Buffalo