A pile of American bison skulls, waiting to be ground for fertilizer. Photograph from the mid-1870s.

Buffalo were the lords of the prairie. To European settlers traveling across America’s Great Plains in the early 1800s, the prairie wind was a constant companion: a gentle whisper echoing across the vast sea of grass that carpeted the center of the North American continent. Sometimes, however, the rumbling of thunder could be heard in the distance, though no storm clouds could be seen. Then the ground would begin to tremble, and suddenly the astonished newcomers would be surrounded by a thundering herd of hulking animals that stretched further than the eye could see.

An adult male measures about nine feet from the muzzle to the insertion of the tail, and thirteen and a half feet to the end of the tail, including the hairs which extent about fifteen inches beyond the vertebras.

The female measures about six and a half feet from the muzzle to the insertion of the tail, and about seven feet to the end of the tail, including the hairs, which extend about ten inches beyond the vertebra.

Audubon states the weight of old males to be nearly two thousand pounds, that of the full-grown fat females to be about twelve hundred pounds.