In the summer of 1988, I worked as a breakfast cook at the Lake Hotel in Yellowstone National Park. I lived in the park for roughly three months, and, before the fires of that summer really started to get out of hand, I used to spend hours sitting alone in Hayden Valley, just north of Lake Yellowstone, looking for bears and watching the buffalo. In the early part of the summer, when the calves are just born, the bison are spread throughout the park in smaller groups, but as the summer wears on they start to congregate into larger herds out in the valley and other places in the park.The bulls have, by then, put on weight and they start knocking each other around, surrounded by clouds of dust and unimpressed cows. It's quite a show.

It would never seem to fail that while I was watching the buffalo, I would catch myself trying to imagine the herds the way they once were...stretching to the horizon in all directions...and I would ALWAYS find myself hoping that, as I sat there watching the herd, one of the many cows would step back and reveal a white calf that, somehow, all the tourist-morons ( tourons ) and park rangers had missed. Of course, it never happened...not to me, anyway.

The Native American tribes that lived in buffalo country all had stories about white bison. They were considered sacred by some and significant by all. They were certainly rare, and for many reasons. The first hurdle was genetic. In the early 1800's, when there were possibly seventy to eighty million buffalo roaming the plains, the odds have been estimated at one in ten million for having a white or albino calf. Even if they weren't nearly that rare, they were certainly more rare than albino humans, which happen once every 15,000 births or so. Secondly, the lack of pigment in the eyes of albinos leave a large portion nearly or totally blind, so the majority of those that were born probably didn't make it through the first year, and...finally... if one did make it beyond these obstacles, they spent their lives as white predator-beacons in a vast sea of brown and, by the mid-1800's, the sea was growing smaller every day...

By 1830 there were an estimated forty million bison left in North America...by 1865...fifteen million...in 1926 there were 4,400 left. It was logically assumed that the recessive gene for the white coat had been lost in the slaughter, and that the full albinos had happened too rarely to ever be seen again. The white buffalo was considered as lost as the great herds it had haunted.

Then in May of 1933, on the National Bison Range in western Montana, hope was rekindled. A white bull calf with ice-blue eyes, brown horns, and a curious brown top-notch was born in captivity.They called him "Big Medicine" and he was soon to become quite a tourist attraction. Not being a full albino, he didn't have the vision problems that traditionally plagued his kind. He grew into one of the major herd bulls.

Four years later he was bred to his own mother in a successful attempt to produce another white calf. "Little Medicine" was born in May of '37. He was a full albino with pink eyes and creamy white hooves, but he was completely blind. At six months old he was shipped to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where he remained until his death in 1949.

Big Medicine outlived his son by a decade. Thousands of tourists flocked every summer to see the big bull until his death in August, 1959 at age 26. A taxidermist named Bob Scriver spent two years mounting the bull's remains. They are now on display at the Montana State Historical Museum in Helena, Montana.

From 1939-58, during Big Medicine's lifetime, no less than six white calves were born to the Big Delta herd in Alaska. None of these calves lived more than a few weeks. The Big Delta herd apparently was a stronghold for the recessive gene during this time and for the next fifteen years as well. In 1961, three more white calves were born, but all of them disappeared within three months. In 1963 two more were born...one only lasted the customary three months, and the other didn't make it through the winter. The twelfth was seen in 1973. Government officials tried to capture it to send it to a zoo in Anchorage, but were unsuccessful. It too, didn't make it through the year. This was the last white bison seen in the Alaska herd.

On August 20, 1994, long after the spring calving season was over, Dave Heider went out at 6:00 in the morning to check on a buffalo that seemed to be ready to give birth on his Janesville, Wisconsin farm. He was surprised to find a white calf with brown eyes, nose and tail-tip. Dave reportedly had "never even heard of a white buffalo" and so he called a journalist friend to report it as a cute little novelty story. The Associated Press eventually picked up the story and the Native American community exploded. Thousands of people, Native American and otherwise, descended on the Heiders farm to visit the calf called "Miracle". People left gifts for the buffalo that is considered to be a "symbol of rebirth" for the Native American community.

When the calf's winter coat grew in, the calf turned deep brown, but the people didn't seem to mind. In the story of the White Buffalo Woman, a major religious figure from the Lakota People's history, the Woman, who appeared as a white buffalo, changed colors many times before turning to white. There are many sites on the web where you can read the story of the White Buffalo Woman, and I'm not really qualified to tell it, but Miracle remains a very important symbol to the Native Americans, and people still flock to see her, even though she has, as of yet, not reverted to her former color. As of the last report I have, she was alive and well and still at the Heider farm in Janesville.

Miracle was not the last white bison to born, however. There were four born in two locations in 1996. On April 27, on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, a white buffalo calf was born at Joe Merrival's ranch. The calf, named "Rainbow", only lived for 25 hours before dying of the scours, a diarrhea-like condition. The very next month, on May 9, another white calf, "Medicine Wheel" was born on the same ranch. Both of the calves born at the Merrival ranch were accused of being buffalo-cow hybrids but genetic testing has, I think, since disproved this. I don't know at this time whether "Medicine Wheel" changed colors or even still lives. If you have any information, e-mail me at swarmack@aristotle.net and let me know.

On June 17, the month after "Medicine Wheel" was born in South Dakota, Paul Shirek found a white female calf in the grass at the Shirek buffalo farm near the Michigan state line. The calf was weak and had neurological problems. Despite the help of a Veterinary Clinic the animal's condition deteriorated and it died on July 20. All was not lost however, as another calf had been found on July 10, by one of the Shirek daughters. The calf was another female, the first calf of a two-year old cow, and was a full albino, with pink eyes and creamy white hooves and horns. She was named "White Cloud" and eventually leased to the National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, North Dakota, where she lives today. She is in good health, though her eyes are sensitive to the light, but for some reason she has not attracted as much attention as "Miracle" or even "Medicine Wheel". I was in Jamestown to see "White Cloud" on Saturday, June 27, 1998. She looked well.

There are roughly 130,000 bison in North America today. The chances of having one white buffalo born in any given herd is reported at about one in six billion. The chances of having one born every month for four consecutive months must be mind-blowing. I'll admit those numbers sound suspect, as I have told you about nineteen white bison born over the last seventy years, but they are still very rare and beautiful animals. I'll keep this page up to date if anything new happens.-S.