why "buffaloes & bison"?

When I first started talking to Brenda (my supervisor) about Gabriel Dumont, she referred to him as a "gifted buffalo hunter from a young age". I didn't think much of the specific words she used until I noticed that "buffalo" and "bison" were used interchangeably in much of the literature I read while doing my research. Realizing I had no idea what the difference was between a buffalo and a bison, I decided to look it up.

 

As it turns out, there is no species of buffalo native to North America. The animal that Dumont and other Indigenous peoples of the plains would have hunted was likely a plains bison (B.b. bison). Buffaloes and bison are both from the Bovidae family, but differ at the genus level. There are two types of buffalo: the African cape buffalo (Syncerus caffer) and the Asian water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). 

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According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, there are many possible theories that explain this mix-up. Some suggest that when Europeans arrived in North America, they noted that the bison looked similar to the buffaloes they had seen in Africa and Asia, and just called the bison a buffalo. Others say that "buffalo" is derived from the French word bœuf, which is what you'll notice on the package the next time you see beef sold at the grocery store. 

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For centuries, Indigenous peoples in what is now called North America have used "buffalo" when referring to bison. Today, "buffalo" is still generally the preferred term. So, we could say that "buffalo" is used in a cultural context, while "bison" is used in a scientific context.

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Then, as if the stars aligned, the name of this blog was born. The "buffalo" part represents the social and cultural elements of my research while the "bison" represents the scientific ones. Genealogy is to genetics what the buffalo is to the bison. Or is it? I suppose my research will determine if the analogy still holds.