Central Oregon home to rare white buffalo herd

News From Indian Country ^ | December 2010 | AP

[Racehorse]

Pendleton Woolen Mills is making new Navajo-style blankets using wool and blended hair shed by an unusual herd of white buffalo in central Oregon.

Ranching experts say fewer than 50 white buffalo, or American bison, live in the U.S., The Oregonian reported.

On a sanctuary east of Bend, 11 of them roam acres of isolated juniper forest under the care of Cynthia Hart-Button and her husband, Charles Button. It's one of the larger collections of white buffalos.

SNIP

Buffalo usually are black or brown. White buffalo are produced when recessive genes trigger the unusual trait. They are not albino.

Some Native American tribes consider them sacred.

"The significance of the white buffalo has been recognized by all the tribes that are buffalo culture people," Jim Stone, a Yankton-Yanktonai Sioux, told The Oregonian. Stone is executive director of the Intertribal Buffalo Council in Rapid City, S.D., an organization created to restore buffalo to Indian nations.

The white buffalo's presence is a prophesy of spiritual rebirth - "an indicator of better times coming to tribal people," Stone said. "Historically, that has been the view."

The first of the Oregon herd was born in Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1997 into a small herd of black bison owned by Dena Riley and her husband, Jim. Hart-Button worked with the couple for a decade in Flagstaff.

Being in a single, small herd with the right genetic traits stacked the odds in favor of the unlikely white buffalo births, she said. "It's like winning a lottery ticket 11 times."

Hart-Button brought the herd to Oregon five years ago after Jim Riley died and a grieving Dena Riley decided to take a break from raising the buffalo.

[sinanju]

Does this mean that Wovoka’s prophecy is about to come true?

I’ll be in the back yard brushing up on my Ghost Dance.

[allmost]

So it mutates, repeatedly, no loss.

[bunkerhill7]

Central Oregon home to rare white buffalo herd -

Holder & Justice Dept sue over racial buffalo bias

[JoeProBono]

[goat granny]

Not a mutation it is a recessive gene....both parents have to carry the gene for it to manifest..

[allmost]

They look tasty. :)

[I see my hands]

White: North America's indigenous color.

[goat granny]

It looks beige and not white, or its not taken in good light..

[Chunga]

Fail, idiot sloganeer

[JoeProBono]

[Vendome]

They’re beautiful...

[dixiechick2000]

I’d say that’s white. Dirty white, but it’s white.

How wonderful to find such beautiful animals!

[CrazyIvan]

I read once that bison can bread very closely genetically without
The problems that most animals have.

[Ophiucus]

I’ll be in the back yard brushing up on my Ghost Dance.

Bingo

[21twelve]

“The white buffalo’s presence is a prophesy of spiritual rebirth - “an indicator of better times coming to tribal people,” Stone said. “Historically, that has been the view.”

***********************

So. Will we all be enjoying better times? Or will the Natives being dancing on the bones of the white man? The way things are going, I see the second scenario.

Or, maybe we can all just enjoy Pendleton blankets with white buffalo wool in them.

[fish hawk]

Be careful, the last people that tried that were massacred by the American Army and they thought they were safe right there in their own back yard.

[fish hawk]

Picture Goat Granny (post 9) comes over the crest of a hill and there is a herd of buffalo. All are the regular dark brown but one is this color. Granny says, “look, an off white beige buffalo”. LOL

[Global2010]

I STOPPED SUPPORTING OUR PENDELTON MADE IN AMERICA COMPANY WHEN I FOUND OUT THEY OUT SOURCE TO MEXICO FOR LABOR.

[Global2010]

PENDELTON SALES A STUFFED WHITE BUFFULO (SIC) FOR AROUND A HUNDRED BUCKS.