Pennsylvania Game News - March 2020 - 7

with the utmost regularity; they traveled in single files, always following
each other at equal distances, forming
droves, on their arrival, of about three
hundred each."
"At that period, he supposed there
could not have been less than two
thousand in the neighborhood of the
spring," Kalm wrote. "They sought for
no manner of food, but only bathed and
drank three or four times a day, and
rolled in the earth, or reposed, with their
flanks distended, in the adjacent shades;
and on the fifth and sixth days separated
into distinct droves, bathed, drank, and
departed in single files, according to the
exact order of their arrival."
Kalm's bison depictions sound like
something out of America's Wild West.
But in 1771, the West was largely
unsettled. His narrative predates the
Louisiana Purchase, and the exodus of
millions of Europeans to America in
the 1800s.
However, his "buffalo" details are
based upon someone else's memories,
which makes his story anecdotal, at
best.
Even Samuel N. Rhoads, one of the
state's earliest naturalists, supported the
idea of resident bison at some time in
Pennsylvania's past.
His research satisfied him that bison
once roamed the "valleys and mountain
glades of the Ohio, Monongahela and
Allegheny rivers, whence it passed
sparingly eastward across the Allegheny into the tributary valleys of the
Susquehanna...," according to Rhoads'
Mammals of Pennsylvania and New
Jersey, published in 1903.
Rhoads also reported in an 1895
article published through the Academy
of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia that
he believed the existence of bison might
MARCH 2020	

have been possible east of the Susquehanna River, but with the "scarcity of
its remains and the absence of reliable
tradition of its presence in this locality,
it is unlikely that this species was ever
more than a straggler in the regions east
of the Susquehanna River drainage."
Add to that Pennsylvania's rich "buffalo" history. The towns of Buffalo,
Buffalo Crossroads, New Buffalo and
Buffalo Mills. Buffalo townships in
Washington, Butler, Perry and Union
counties. Buffalo Run and Buffalo
Creek. Even the more recently established Little Buffalo State Park and the
Buffalo Valley Rail Trail support the
buffalo supposition.
These established namesakes would
seem to provide tangible evidence that
Pennsylvania bison did exist at some
time, and might lead one to believe
they were being buffaloed by anyone
suggesting otherwise.
And of course, there's no ignoring
the work of Henry W. Shoemaker, who
served as a state archivist and folklorist at the state Historical and Museum
Commission from the 1930s through
the 1950s and authored the 1917 Extinct
Pennsylvania Animals.
Shoemaker often is accused of
embellishing the bison's past in Penn's
Woods by publishing unverifiable
stories.
In 1915, he even went as far as to
scientifically name Pennsylvania bison,
which he considered different from
western bison, as Bison americanus
pennsylvanicus.
But a scientific name based upon
folklore, doesn't hold up, especially
when it's created by a man without
taxonomic credentials.
It took a while, but Shoemaker's
"Pennsylvania bison" was eventually
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