Buffalo In Georgia

Talk about nearly any phase of western history, and sooner or later the word “buffalo” is almost certain to enter into the conversation. Usually it’s surrounded with an air of romance and adventure. Definitely considered an animal of the plains, the buffalo is firmly imprinted in our minds as an integral part of the colorful exploration, settlement and overall history of the western frontier. But this stately old gentleman also played a significant historical role in Georgia and other eastern states before his numbered days were up. 

It might be difficult for some of us to imagine a Cherokee or Creek Indian brave with bow-and-arrow in hand stalking through a hardwood forest in northeast Georgia, or along the edge of a marsh in south Georgia, in search of buffalo, but it did happen, probably a lot more often than we realize. When Europeans first arrived in the New World, the buffalo’s range in the East extended from New York to northern Florida, and southward from the Great Lakes into the Ohio Valley all the way to the Gulf Coast east of the Mississippi River.  

These animals were plains buffalo, smallest of the two sub-species. Herds were never as large as they were in the West. Numbers in a herd usually tallied anywhere from just a few animals to several hundred. One report from early settlers in south Georgia cites a herd near the coast between Brunswick and Savannah containing several thousand animals. There were known to be heavy concentrations in this area, so this estimate was probably accurate. 

Since buffalo originally migrated into the Southeast from the Northwest, herds in Georgia and the Carolinas were never as large as those in Tennessee and Mississippi. The closer in proximity to the Mississippi River, the more numerous buffalo seem to have been.

Many of the early pioneers hunted buffalo in Kentucky and Tennessee out of sheer necessity, and later on the father of our country hunted them in Ohio for sport. In the East, the buffalo left us with a legacy of his time, a time that seems all too brief, looking back. He also left us with a legacy of his passing; not of the magnitude he did on the western plains, but there are many reminders of his short day in the sun. 

Revered By Native Tribes 

Whitetails were the staff of life to all eastern Indians, but buffalo, although much less abundant in numbers, were regarded as very important game animals, as well. Unfortunately, historical accounts of many of our eastern Indians are incomplete and sketchy at best, and much valuable knowledge was never documented or collected. What little is known, however, gives considerable insight into the buffalo’s importance in the East. 

In his highly acclaimed book “The Southeastern Indians” (The University of Tennessee Press, 1978), well-known author and anthropologist Charles Hudson (1932-2013), who taught at the University of Georgia, points out several examples of the buffalo’s value to the various native tribes throughout Georgia and the Southeast. For one thing, buffalo skins, where obtainable, with the hair left on were used as winter coats by many of these Indians.

According to Hudson, the Algonkian language contained a word for these coats meaning traditional cold weather garment, and they were later called “matchcoats,” probably an adaptation of that word. Not all Indians were fortunate enough to own a buffalo hide coat, and those owning one were elevated in status. Since deer hides and other skins were easier to come by, buffalo robes were highly prized and greatly valued. The buffalo skin matchcoats extended from the shoulders to the knees with the hair facing the outside and with colorful geometric designs painted on the inside.

Many warriors of the southeastern tribes, Hudson tells us, used armor and shields made of tough buffalo leather. The Alabamas, a branch of the Creek Indian Nation residing in what is now the state of Alabama, celebrated a distinct buffalo dance among others. Chickasaw war parties of northern Mississippi were sometimes known to send out scouts who fastened buffalo hooves to their feet in an attempt to confuse their enemies. There appear to have been moderately large buffalo herds in western Tennessee, and the Natchez Indians hunted them with regularity in that area. 

Hudson cites that along the Gulf Coast, “the Choctaws made an ingenious cylindrical fish trap out of fresh buffalo hides. The blood from the hide attracted catfish. When a fisherman saw a catfish enter, he pulled a string to close the trap.” 

Choctaws living in what is now the state of Mississippi were known to make frequent trips across the Mississippi River into Arkansas to hunt buffalo where numbers were more plentiful.

Buffalo were apparently highly regarded by the two predominant Indian tribes in Georgia, the Cherokees of the northern mountain region and the Creeks who occupied the lower two-thirds of the state. The ninth moon of the Creek calendar was the moon of the buffalo. In a way, Hudson points out, Creek Indian men appear to have symbolically associated their women with buffalo and deer, two highly sought game animals, while they associated themselves with the mountain lion or cougar, a predator known to hunt buffalo and deer. According to the Indian’s belief system, men hunted buffalo and deer just as the cougar did, and men symbolically hunted women (to be their wives) just as the exalted predator (the cougar) hunted prey for sustenance. The cougar seemed to stand in a class by itself because nothing in the wild preyed upon it, yet it preyed upon many other game species.

Female infants were wrapped in deer and bison skins, while male infants were wrapped in cougar skins. Creek Indian women wore garters made of buffalo hair not only for adornment, but for fending off such things as miscarriages and evil spirits. Cherokees under treatment for rheumatism were forbidden to touch the skin of a buffalo, eat the meat, or even use a spoon made of a buffalo horn, for fear of worsening the malady. There seemed to be a symbolic connection between the buffalo’s hump and crippling rheumatism. Hudson further tells us “the southeastern Indians did not possess the true loom, but the women were skilled at twining, plaiting, and weaving with their fingers and they wove mantles on an upright loom with suspended threads. The most important animal fibers used in weaving were buffalo hair, though it was not always available…” Many of the finished pieces contained patterns and designs of dyed buffalo hair. 

One question often crops up about buffalo in the East. If they are basically grass-eaters preferring vast open spaces such as are found on the western plains, how could they do so well in the dense eastern woodlands? There are several possible answers. First of all, in many parts of the western U.S. and Canada, buffalo were known to inhabit densely forested areas from time to time. So finding them in wooded habitat is not as unusual as one might think. Secondly, in the East, both the Creek and Cherokee Indians cultivated tobacco, corn, squash, beans and various types of melons. (All of which were later adopted by the settlers.) Great areas of land were cleared for farming purposes. Sometimes villages would move, or the land would be abandoned for one reason or another, and native grasses would quickly reclaim the cultivated areas. In addition, the Cherokees commonly burned off huge blocks of ground cover in the forests each season, presumably to make nut-gathering easier, for hunting purposes, to aid in farming, and for other specialized reasons. The surface of this burned-off land would come back in grasses and plants, creating vast park-like expanses ideal for many types of game. Some of the early American explorers like William Bartram noted these areas and even referred to them as parks. Huge flocks of wild turkeys were known to feed here, as well as large herds of deer. It is likely that buffalo used these parks, as well.

Many of the buffalo in the South were reported by early settlers to inhabit coastal areas where the ground was covered in dense canebrakes near marshes and swamps. This was particularly true along the Georgia coast. The buffalo seemed to prefer these wet areas adjacent to waterways and open sawgrass glades. Food should have been readily available in these areas, as well as easy access to mud wallows that the big animals dearly loved. Biting insects were always a problem in warmer climates, and caked mud was a primary source of protection. One of the earliest written reports of buffalo in the East comes from Garcilaso de la Vega’s account of DeSoto’s journey across Georgia in 1540. DeSoto reported seeing “cow horns” in a Cherokee village in the mountains along the north Georgia/North Carolina line. Mention is also made of seeing “fresh beef among the natives.”

Highways And Byways

The Spaniards naturally assumed that the Indians kept some type of domestic cattle like their own. They were somewhat puzzled because the Indians would not show them these domestic herds. The puzzle was solved when DeSoto reached the banks of the Mississippi River later in his journey. Here, the Spaniards saw actual remains of freshly killed buffalo for the first time, as they were a much more common sight along the Mississippi. From Pennsylvania southward to northern Florida, the early explorers and settlers found networks of well-used animal trails. Many of these trails also became Indian highways. Most are attributed as having been originally made by buffalo. Some were said to be 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep. They often passed near mineral or salt licks. A few of them even went over mountain passes. Many of the early pioneers praised these trails as being perfect wilderness highways. The wilderness trail from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky is credited as being a buffalo trail. Towns later sprang up along many of these old paths. Lexington, Frankfurt and Cincinnati are only a few. In Kentucky and Ohio, some of these trails were said to be 6 feet deep in places and wide enough for wagons to pass along two abreast.

Daniel Boone and his party hunted buffalo when first arriving in Kentucky. They reportedly lived on buffalo meat for the first hard winter. George Washington, while surveying, was quoted as saying some of the early buffalo trails were crooked and not very well chose. He took part in a buffalo hunt near Gallipolis, Ohio while still a young man. A section of the Ohio River basin was said to be the home of the legendary “Pennsylvania bison,” a coal black variety residing in dense forests and adjoining grasslands. Many thought these animals to be a separate sub-species, but they disappeared before this supposition could be proven one way or the other.  

After the coming of the whites, the Indians engaged in large-scale trading of deer hides, but little evidence has been found to indicate that the Creeks of Georgia and other Eastern Indians did much trading of buffalo hides. This may be because they were much scarcer than deer hides and considered too valuable to trade, or because the whites expressed little interest in the heavy, cumbersome hides. Some were given as prestigious gifts to white leaders by various chiefs. 

Tomochichi, famous chief of the Yamacraws, who occupied the site of present-day Savannah before Oglethorpe’s colonists arrived, established a peaceful, working relationship with the settlers in Georgia and South Carolina. During a treaty ceremony in 1733, he presented Governor Oglethorpe a buffalo skin adorned with eagle feathers. The feathers were said to symbolize the speed of the eagle, while the skin symbolized the strength of the buffalo. 

At another important ceremony held in Savannah in 1735, the well-known Creek chief Chekilli (or Chigelly) again presented a buffalo hide to Governor Oglethorpe, which had painted on it red and black characters depicting a Creek migration legend. The skin was shipped to London and put on exhibition. 

An Easy Target

By 1700, buffalo were rapidly declining in the East. By 1750, few were being killed. Both Indians and settlers alike expressed concern over the dwindling numbers. In 1759, the provincial House of Commons passed an act preventing the killing of “deer, beavers, and buffaloes,” in certain areas of Georgia. In 1763, the Mortar, another well-known and colorful Creek chief, complained to authorities that buffalo were being driven from the Indian’s hunting grounds by settlers and domestic livestock near the present-day site of Augusta. Even then, most people failed to realize that buffalo were not only being driven from the land, they were being slowly but surely exterminated. A general rule of thumb seemed to follow that wherever a new settlement sprang up on the frontier, the end of the buffalo came shortly thereafter.

By 1800, only a handful of the big animals were left in the East; by 1820, none at all. In Ohio they were wiped out by 1802. Pennsylvania’s last herd was slaughtered in deep snow in 1799. Final remnants in Wisconsin were killed in 1832, wiped out by hungry pioneers who needed meat and hides. 

In Georgia, one of the last references to living buffalo dates back to the 1770s. Thomas Spalding, an early settler and grandson to Colonel William McIntosh for whom McIntosh County was named, wrote that his father owned a string of coastal trading houses in the vicinity of Brunswick, and he was regularly supplied with buffalo tongue to eat. A full century before the hide hunters on the western plains began to slaughter buffalo for only their hides and tongues, buffalo tongue was considered a great delicacy in Georgia. 

The extermination of the buffalo in the East was probably not as deliberate or methodical as it was in the West. Like deer in the north Georgia mountains, it resulted more or less from random hunting by hungry pioneers. The big animal had few natural enemies in the wild, and considering his size and the fact that he had extremely poor eyesight, he presented an easy target for a man with a rifle. Nor was the buffalo singled out as the only victim of man’s ruthless killing. 

Following in the buffalo’s wake, in the span of a few decades came the end of the eastern elk, the eastern timber wolf (in most areas east of the Mississippi), the passenger pigeon and the eastern cougar. In many parts of the Southeast, the disappearance of whitetails, black bears, wild turkeys, eagles and similar birds of prey, gray squirrels and even raccoons all came dangerously close to the edge of extinction. Today, we hardly realize how close some these everyday critters came to the brink, but a few, like the wild buffalo and passenger pigeon, are gone forever from the forests and treetops of our Georgia woodlands.

One more thing: Throughout this story I’ve been referring to these big shaggy beasts as “buffalo” instead of “bison.” 

My good friend Art Rilling, who always had a small herd of buffalo at the Yellow River Game Ranch in Lilburn, used to love it when people came up to  him and tried to tell him that his animals were not “buffalos.” 

“Do you know what the true definition of a bison is?” he would ask. 

“No,” they would answer. 

“A ‘bison’ is a big bowl Englishmen use to wash their hands in!” Art would tell them.