Home On A New Range Yakama Indians Raising Bison In Central Washington

After an 800-year hiatus, the most powerful chief of Native American legend is prospering once again in the Valley of the Three Sisters - Adams, St. Helens and Rainier.

He is Tsulum, chief of the buffalo people, and his family has grown from 12 to 45 since it began assembling in the Yakima Valley in 1992.

Translation: A herd of bison, commonly known as buffalo, were adopted by the Yakama Indian Nation’s Cultural Heritage Center Committee five years ago and placed on 80 reservation acres. Last month, the herd demonstrated its ability to grow and prosper with the birth of nine calves.

While other ranches and small farms around Central Washington are raising bison, this is the Yakama Nation’s first encounter with the animals in hundreds of years.

The purpose of the herd is threefold, says Judy Garcia, director of the Cultural Heritage Center: as a potential economic development project for the tribe, a source of buffalo meat for the Yakama Nation’s restaurant and another link for tourists to the Nation’s ancient traditions and history.

Raising bison may sound like a simple proposition, good for tourism and buffalo burgers. It is, however, a surprisingly complicated task for those charged with caring for the intelligent, powerful and feisty animals.

“It is difficult to take a wild animal and raise it behind a fence as livestock,” acknowledges Scott McCorquodale, a wildlife biologist for the Yakama Indian Nation. “They don’t have the same respect for fences as cattle have.”

Difficult, but it can be done, says John Carl, a 29-year veteran of ranching and a registered member of the Yakama Indian Nation. Carl was hired by McCorquodale to be the primary caretaker of the Nation’s bison herd.

Highly revered, bison are the topic of both legends and mystery for the Yakamas. The most prominent legend, says Virginia Beavert, a well-known Yakama cultural historian, involves Spilyay, a trickster who often takes the form of a coyote.

In “The Buffalo Legend” published in “The Way It Was,” a collection of Yakama Indian tales, Spilyay leaves the Yakima Valley in search of a legendary people of the Great Plains. He finds Tsulum, the buffalo people, to be more beautiful and powerful than rumors proclaim.

The coyote longs to possess some of the Tsulum women and negotiates with the chief to give him his five buffalo daughters.

Wise to Spilyay’s lusty intentions, the chief agrees, with conditions. Spilyay must deliver the five daughters to the Valley of the Three Sisters, which lies between mountains today known as Adams, St. Helens and Rainier, before he takes them as his wives.

As the journey progresses, Spilyay’s shape transforms. His paws become hooves. His straight back becomes a towering hump and his face becomes that of a buffalo. Eager to have the daughters, Spilyay breaks his promise one evening and, in doing so, transforms back into a coyote. The five daughters abandon him and return to the Great Plains.

For the Yakamas, the legend explains why bison failed to inhabit the Yakima Valley.

Archaeological evidence suggests, however, that bison did inhabit much of the Columbia Plateau, including the Yakima Valley.

But they disappeared approximately eight centuries ago, says Carl Gustafson a zoological expert for Washington State University’s anthropology department. The disappearance, he confirms, could possibly have triggered memories that later became “The Buffalo Legend” to the Yakamas.

Evidence was found along the Columbia River in more than a dozen “pit houses” or butchering sites that were part of ancient Indian encampments. The closest site to the Yakima Valley was discovered last October on Bateman Island, located at the confluence of the Yakima and Columbia rivers.

Gustafson dismisses the possibility that the bison found on Bateman Island were brought there from the Great Plains. The butchering patterns, he says, are distinctly unique to the Indians of the Columbia Plateau. Bones were broken below and above joints instead of cut cleanly across the joints, as is the custom of the Plains Indians, he says.

The humanlike nature of bison also makes them the stuff of myths and legends. Garcia describes them as majestic and intelligent. She acknowledges that they will not stay where they don’t want to be.

Three years ago, two dozen bison made that clear to caretakers when they decided the Ahtanum hills looked more appealing than the confines of their Lower Valley pasture. Weighing close to 2,000 pounds, one of the males lifted and thrust his massive rusty brown and black body onto the sharp barbs of the pasture’s barbed wire fence. The fence collapsed beneath him and the herd followed single file out of the pasture.

By the time John Carl, the bison’s caretaker, discovered the break, the herd had walked halfway up Ahtanum Ridge’s south face. It took seven people in vehicles to herd the bison back to pasture.

Since then, Carl has been busy raising the pasture’s fences to approximately 6 feet, a height proven to be more successful at containing bison.

Despite their beauty, Carl knows firsthand how unwise it is to turn your back on a bison - even for a second. He barely missed the piercing blow of a bull’s horn recently.

It happened when Carl and McCorquodale were loading a bull in a trailer. The bull appeared to be cooperating and all seemed to be going well. “In a matter of seconds I’d turned and he was after me,” Carl recalls. “Scott said, ‘Look out!’ and I jumped.”

Although he turned in time to miss the horn, the bull butted Carl with his head. “No serious injuries,” he says with a chuckle. He did, however, sustain a few bumps and bruises.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Bison facts In the 1880s, there were estimated to be fewer than 500 bison in existence in North America, says Mark Heckert, executive director of the national InterTribal Bison Cooperative in Rapid City, S.D. Today, an estimated 175,000 bison thrive on the continent. Bison populations began to improve when they were deemed an endangered species and protected within the confines of national parks or on private farms. In the last 20 years, says Heckert, they’ve experienced “explosive growth” and popularity in the commercial sector, where bison meat is touted as leaner and lower in cholesterol than beef. Bison shed. To remove unwanted hair in the spring, bison roll, creating “dust bowls.” The hair falls away from the skin in either handfuls or large sheets that can be as long and wide as a human forearm. Bison come to reproductive maturity at age 3 and usually live to be between 20 and 40 years old. Adult bison bulls weigh between 1,800 and 2,200 pounds. Adult bison cows weigh between 1,000 and 1,400 pounds. When they are “dressed out” or butchered, a single cow or bull produces between 700 and 800 pounds of lean meat. In contrast, the average head of beef produces 600 to 650 pounds of fattier meat, says John Carl, a 29-year veteran of cattle ranching and caretaker of the Yakama Nation’s bison herd. The Yakama Nation’s Cultural Heritage Center restaurant in Toppenish serves about 70 pounds of bison meat as burgers and stew to customers each week. From three to five head are butchered each year from the Nation’s herd to provide the meat, which is popular with tourists. The Cultural Heritage Center may one day sell bison skins and trophy heads as part of an economic development project.