LITMIR.BIZ

      A central African market.

      bison, water buffalo, Et yak

      Roasted American buffalo, also called bison, was the main dish served to me at a Boy Scout ranch in New Mexico in the 1950s after a month spent hiking and riding horses across the rough, dry mountains and plains. At the time, one of the coins in American pockets had a picture of an Indian chief on one side, a bison on the other; thus, it was called a “buffalo nickel,” and as a Boy Scout, Indian lore was something I knew well. At home, my mother hated to cook and my father’s bland dietary demands made dinner time quite mundane, so eating the same food that nourished countless American Indians was quite exotic, permitting me to ignore the fact that it tasted like a slightly pungent version of my mother’s overdone roast beef. (Sorry, Mom.)

      Sliced Water Buffalo Meat Stew

      2 pieces of water buffalo meat, each the size of a hand salt

      4 straight-bulbed spring onions

      2 (small) heads of garlic

      5 slices galingal

      1 large onion, sliced vertically

      fish sauce

      2 fresh red chili peppers, chopped crossways

      2 Kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped 2 limes

      chopped coriander leaves

      ground black pepper

      young cucumbers

      To prepare the meat, remove the tendons. Then wash the pieces, rub salt into them, and toast over a fire until the outside is golden. Take the spring onions and chop the bulbs and adjacent green parts only (not the leaves). Place the garlic in the embers of a charcoal fire until they are partly cooked but not well done, then remove them, take off the charred outer skin, and chop them vertically.

      Put the meat, galingal, sliced large onion, and a sprinkling of salt into a pot with enough water to cover the meat. Put the pot on the fire. When the water boils, sprinkle in some fish sauce and continue boiling until the water is reduced and the meat tender.

      Take out the meat and slice it thinly. Spoon out and throw away the galingal. Return the sliced meat to the pot. The amount of water should be just sufficient to keep the meat moist. Taste, and check the saltiness. Stir in the chopped ingredients and the juice of the two limes.

      Put the soup in a large bowl, garnish it with ground black pepper and the chopped coriander leaves, and serve it with young cucumbers.

      Sources

      Jerky made from bison is available from the Tasty Jerky Company, (800) 537-5988. Check the company’s web site at <www.info2000.net/~tastymilk/hnybuff.html>.

      Yak breeders in the U.S.: Harlan Leer, Ranchos Dos Osos, P.O. Box 1103, Steamboat Springs, CO 80477, phone (970) 879-1789, email <[email protected]>; Cynthia and Dave Huber, Duckett Creek Ranch, Hillside, CO 81232, phone (719) 9424181, email <[email protected]>; and Nancy Allen, Allen’s Ark, P.O. Box 133, Dixon, MO 59831, phone (406) 745-2838, email <[email protected]>.

      The bison was once so numerous, its shaggy, humped-back herds roamed the Western U.S. plains like zebra and gazelle still inhabit parts of the African veldt. Before the white man arrived, an estimated forty to sixty million bison ranged from central Canada south into Mexico, where it was a primary source of food for the nomadic Indian tribes, including the Cheyenne, Cree, Kiowa, Sioux, Osage, Blackfoot, and many more. Like other grazing animals, bison relied more on a keen sense of smell than sight and hearing to detect approaching harm; native hunters frequently approached the herds on their hands and knees, with wolf skins hiding their human forms, their bodies smeared with buffalo fat to hide their human odor, bow-and-arrow at the ready. The hunters also constructed high walls of brush along either side of known buffalo migration routes, forming a sort of funnel leading to a rough corral, where they easily killed the targets of their choice. When the geography permitted, they stampeded the buffalo over cliffs. After acquiring horses and rifles from early European hunters and explorers, the tribal hunt became more efficient.

      One kill, averaging between a thousand and fifteen hundred pounds, could provide for a tribe for days. Usually the first parts consumed were the offal, although the favorite parts-generally either roasted or dried for future use—were the tongue and meat from the hump, which was considered the tenderest and sweetest. Eaten soon after slaughter, the meat was roasted on a spit or boiled in a skin bag with water and stones heated in an open fire, a process that produced a nutritious stew or soup.

      The Indians wasted nothing, using every part of the shaggy beast. Clothing and moccasins were made from the tanned hide, along with river rafts and boats; the cured hide also covered the Indians’ tall, conical tents, or tipi. With the hair left on, the hides became blankets for the bitter winter cold. Tanning agents were produced from the brains, fat, and liver, soap from the leftover fat, glue from the rendered hooves. War shields were crafted from the tough neck hide, arrowheads and knives from the bones, powder flasks, spoons, and drinking cups from the horns. Sinew was used as thread. Hoes were fashioned from the shoulder blade, and stomachs were sewn into water bags. The long hair was plaited into halters. Even the dried dung was used, as it is today when no wood is available, for campfires, producing little smoke.

      The Indians killed an estimated three hundred thousand buffalo a year, well below the natural replacement rate. That changed tragically in the early nineteenth century, when a vogue for big game hunting swept much of the world and white settlers with rifles began populating the American plains, followed by entrepreneurs and adventurers. The bison were killed by white hunters first for their meat at a rate of about two million a year, but frequently only the tongues were taken for the menus of fashionable restaurants in Chicago and New York and the huge carcasses were left to rot. The slaughter accelerated to about three million a year in the 1870s, when bison hides were first made into commercial leather.

      William F. Cody, an early plainsman, acquired his nickname “Buffalo Bill” for shooting bison as food for railroad construction crews and is reported to have killed 4,280 animals within one seventeen-month period. Once the railroads were in place, the white man shot millions more each year, blasting away from trains passing through the diminishing herds. Some contend that this was a plot to beat back the native Americans; slaughter the primary source of their survival and you wipe out the Indians, too. More likely, the hunters got some sort of thrill from banging away at the beasts.

      Whatever

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