Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
By 1806
Primary Source Reference:
"Walk through the Phil[adelphi]a Museum" (1805-1806), p. 40
Additional Source Text:
The specimen "is a female. The hump is much larger in the male & the hair on its head and fore legs much longer and bushy. "They walk faster than the common Ox, on which account it would be important to domesticate them for the draft. Their fine coat may be spun for cloathing, and their flesh are savory. Comparing this with the Cow with 5 legs just before it [in the Museum display], the strength of the Buffaloe is apparently much greater. And its thick wool better fits it to bear our Winter. But alas! They are destroyed wantonly! And, in a little while must be extinct."
Poulson's American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 9 Jan 1822 records a buffalo on a list of specimens "mostly obtained from high up the Missouri by Titian Peale" during the Long Expedition.
Notes:
The Plains bison (Bison bison bison bison) is one of two subspecies/ecotypes of the American bison, the other being the wood bison (B. b. athabascae). This common species is the only one all of whose scientific names (genus, subgenus, species, and subspecies) and its common name are the same.
Titian Ramsay Peale (1799-1885) was engaged as assistant naturalist on the Long Expedition (May 1819-Nov 1820). His services were "required in collecting specimens suitable to be preserved, in drafting and delineating them, in preserving the skins, &c. of animals, and in sketching the statifications of rocks, earths &c. as presented on the declivities of precipices." (Edwin James, Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819 and '20: By Order of the Hon. J.C. Calhoun, Sec'y of War: Under the Command of Major Stephen H. Long, vol. 1 [Philadelphia, 1823], p. 3)
John Godman's American Natural History. Part I. Mastology, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1826-1828), 3: 4-28 has a long description of the bison, likely based on the specimen in the Museum. The image is the plate following p. 4.
Specimen Type:
Dead/preserved
Peale's Common Name:
Buffalo
Current Common Name:
Plains bison
Current Scientific Name
Bison bison bison
