To say that tens of millions of buffalo (Bison bison) vanished from the prairies in the late 1800s is to whitewash a slaughter of historical proportions. American hunters sparked a demand for bison hides and bones, which Canadian hunters filled in their turn.
The bison carcasses were left to rot; their skeletons littered the plains; the Plains Nations’ economy wiped out in the drive to settle the west.
Driven
the cattle drive proceeds apace the horses are already gone, replaced with metal machines, eyeless, breathless
the skies are not cloudy all day and the river wizens between muddy banks those green pastures must be over the hill where the future becomes the present
for now, follow the great herds of bison into the past, into the dust that explodes as each hoof strikes the dry earth
