Day 31 (D-30) Buffalo

Buffalo the town where we will spend the night.
Buffalo, the animal -->  information from Dan O'Brien's books.
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Buffalo, the town: Buffalo is located at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains. (Do you remember the Battle of Little Bighorn?) These mountains are in northern Wyoming and in southern Montana. The battle took place in Montana. 
It's about 70 miles from Gillette to Buffalo; 70 miles, about an hour and 20 minutes in our coach.

Population 2016  : 4585, but it goes up considerably during Longmire Days. The sixth annual event is scheduled for Friday July 7th, Saturday July 8th, and Sunday July 9th, 2017. It has grown to an event with more than 10,000 people coming from all over the U.S. and even other countries.
Come back to the blog tomorrow to learn more.

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Buffalo Bull Grazing, by George Catlin 1845

Buffalo, the animal, Dan O'Brien's ranch, Dan O'Brien's efforts and hopes for the Great Plains. 
I learned so much from reading his book Buffalo for the Broken Heart.
I'll share some of the information taken from Chapter 6 in the book:

More than 60,000,000 (60 MILLION! ) buffalo roamed the American continent before the white man arrived.  The Native Americans killed them for their meat, their hides...and their tongues which were considered a real delicacy.  But their techniques were not sophisticated and depended a lot on luck until the Plains Indians got horses from the Spanish and they were able to hunt the buffalo more effectively. But still they killed few compared to the numbers killed by the white man later.  After the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-06) whites and Indians began a buffalo commerce with the Eastern Seaboard, but there was little trade at this time.  But as we move further into the 19th century, we learn that thousands upon thousands of buffalo were being shot down. They were an easy target because they had poor eyesight and they had no fear of firearms.  Railroad companies killed them for food to feed their workers.  Tongues were shipped abroad to the world's finest restaurants, and often the rest of the animal was left to rot on the plains.  There was a South American leather shortage and so the buffalo were killed for their hides which made high quality leather.  It was said that  in 1867-68, Buffalo Bill, William F. Cody, killed 4,280 buffalo in 18 months to feed the men working on the railroads.  By the late 1870s buffalo hides were being shipped out of the South Dakota area by the hundreds of thousands.  By 1884 the big herds had been decimated.

For more complete information, I highly recommend that you read Dan O'Brien's two books (either one or both): Buffalo for the Broken Heart (2001) and Wild Idea (2014) which updates his story.  Some of my students have read Wild Idea and they were very interested in what Dan O'Brien shares with his readers.

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Today's song: Git along little dogies.
Listen (with the lyrics) today; I'll explain later on the blog.

"Git along little dogies
You know that Wyoming will be your new home." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bZlZwusUrw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2cFji4CmHE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VBlinUH1c4  Children's version

My best,
Jane
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-- spend the night =  You spend money (dépenser de l'argent) and you spend time ( here passer la nuit).
-- is located = can be found
-- is scheduled for = is planned for
-- to roam  = to travel purposefully unhindered through a wide area (errer)
-- a hide = the skin of an animal
-- tongue = a muscular organ in the mouth, the principal organ of taste
-- a delicacy =  a choice food, excellent food
-- Eastern Seaboard =  also called Atlantic Seaboard, region of the eastern United States, fronting the Atlantic Ocean and extending from Maine in the north to Florida in the south. Not merely a geographic term, the Eastern Seaboard is, historically, the part of the United States that was first settled by European immigrants and from which most westward American settlement originated.
-- thousands upon thousands =  
http://www.linguee.fr/anglais-francais/traduction/hundreds+upon+hundreds.html
-- shot down = killed
-- target = cible
-- eyesight =  vision, ability to see (la vue)
-- firearms = guns
-- to rot = pourrir
-- leather shortage = un manque de cuir (peaux)
-- herds = large groups of animals
--to update = to bring up to date  (actualiser)