History of American buffalo equal parts natural history, testimony to hubris of westward expansion

REVIEW: BLOOD MEMORY: THE TRAGIC DECLINE AND IMPROBABLE RESURRECTION OF THE AMERCAN BUFFALO by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns

With Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo, the tale is in the title. From collaborators Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns, this opus serves as an accompaniment to Burns’ PBS documentary “The American Buffalo.” No strangers to American history, Duncan and Burns remain trusted voices as they confront the issues that nearly eviscerated buffalo from the landscape of the Great Plains, and the unlikely resurgence of an animal uniquely bound to the history of the American West.

It is easy to glamorize “The West,” with its lore acting as a foundation for aspects of Americana. The slaughter of buffalo is a particularly gruesome stain on this image that many histories choose to leave out. Irreparably tied to the unchecked violence and destruction of Indigenous Americans and their tribal lands, the story of the American buffalo is not for the faint of heart. Duncan and Burns do not shy away from difficult material in Blood Memory, instead exploring the tragedy through an in-depth analysis of our nation’s official mammal from early history to today.

Blood Memory is equal parts natural history and a testimony to the greed and hubris of westward expansion. The pair spend great pains not to minimize the role of white settlers in the near eradication of the buffalo, and how this effected the tribes that had long coexisted with them. Descriptions of skinned and rotting carcasses strewn across the prairie are brought into sharper focus with the realization that this death blow was dealt in only a decade. An animal once numbering in the millions swiftly “reduced to fewer than a thousand—mostly small groups of a dozen or less, scattered in different corners across the West.”

Though dense at times, Burns and Duncan offer countless archival images to supplement the narrative. Hundreds of pictures, paintings, maps, and documents keep the reader from envisioning the history as a distant past, effectively adding significant depth to an already profound position. Burns and Duncan are experienced historians, and their well-researched effort shines much deserved attention on the plight of the buffalo and the people who depended on it.

Blood Memory’s conclusion acts as an unexpected blessing. Turning towards optimism, Burns and Duncan style the species’ recovery as a tale of redemption. They anchor this perspective with a concept that is so timely its intentions ring clear. In matters of conservation, Americans are in a unique position to fix what past generations have destroyed. Blood Memory is an examination of human and animal interaction, with a quote from author Wallace Stegner stating that we are “the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.” Triumphs of land conservation and changing public opinion brought a species back from the brink. It is hard to not read this rich narrative and wonder what else we could save should we devote ourselves to it.

Penguin Random House, Hardcover $40; Oct 10, 2023 | ISBN 9780593537343