Buffalo Jump Blues (29 page)

“Are we going to go camp? You told my uncle we were going to set up a tent.”

“The tent's in the truck.”

“You said you'd give me an Indian name if I helped you.”

“I did, didn't I?”

“What is it?”

“I'm thinking,” Harold said. The night was setting in cold and he put his arm around her shoulder. She smelled like a little girl who had lain in straw and hugged a buffalo.

“Hanata,” he said.

“That's pretty. What's it mean?”

“Peace,” Harold said.

The river shone now with moonlight. It didn't appear to move, and together with the shadows of the bison on the silvered grasses it seemed timeless, as close to a portrait of Eden as any of Harold's grandfather's grandfathers had ever known. But the river moved, it was always moving, and Harold knew that in time the bison would again follow the current down into their past, into their uncertain future.

“Peace,” he said again. “Like right here. Peace like a bend in a river.”

I
sent the finished draft of
Buffalo Jump Blues
to Kathryn Court and Victoria Savanh, my wise editors at Viking Penguin, last July 15th, before driving to West Yellowstone, Montana, for a book reading. Like most writers who have sent in a book—one might as well have mailed in one's heart—I was worried. There was, of course, the concern that they wouldn't like it. But regardless of its reception, I worried that I had misrepresented or overstated the plight of the American bison, the subject around which my story is told.

After the reading that evening, I drove over Targhee Pass into Idaho. As I crested the pass on Route 20, I caught sight of a lone bull bison plodding along at the side of the road. I stopped and took a few photos as he came abreast the
WELCOME TO IDAHO
sign. One of the photos is posted on my Facebook author Web page (Keith McCafferty) dated July 17, 2015. Take a look at that photo, for the story of that bison is the story of my novel.

The irony of the situation struck home immediately. This icon of the West was not welcome in Idaho, any more than he was welcome in Montana. In fact, by straying outside a narrowly drawn buffer zone surrounding Yellowstone Park, he had signed his death warrant, although he was on public land and posed no danger to livestock in the area (in the form of transference of disease), or to private property, or to human beings. I drove off reluctantly, knowing his fate. In fact, he would be shot by officials of the Idaho Department of Livestock the next day and loaded onto a truck, then quickly covered with a tarp to keep the shame of his demise from the critical eye of the public, though not from volunteers of the Buffalo Field Campaign, who posted a video of his execution on their Web site.

No, this was not fiction. No, I had not been guilty of overstatement.

If you are concerned about the future of bison, you may be interested to know that an environmental impact statement is being drafted for an Interagency Bison Management Plan, jointly being prepared by the National Park Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, and other state and federal agencies. Updates on the progress of the plan, including information on public comment periods, can be found at fwp.mt.gov.

As of this writing, as many as a thousand wild Yellowstone bison are killed each winter to reduce herd size in the Park and to prevent them from recolonizing their historical ranges. Attempts to establish unfenced herds on Indian reservations and vast tracts of sparsely inhabited public lands are met with stout resistance by the state. These practices will change only if people raise their pens as well as their voices.

It was not my intention to write a political novel with
Buffalo Jump Blues
. I hoped only to tell a good story, and if that story casts light on a subject that has been deliberately obfuscated and kept from the public eye, so much the better. You will be the judge of the novel. As far as maintaining my neutrality about bison, which once freely roamed the breadth of the continent in tens of millions, and today, reduced to a few thousand head, are by and large treated as unruly cattle to be fenced and sent to slaughter, I admit my failure.

 

Bozeman, Montana

February 19, 2016

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