New West Book Review

Michael Punke’s “Last Stand”

By Jenny Shank, 7-30-07

Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West
By Michael Punke
Smithsonian Books
304 pages, $25.95

The buffalo has always been one of the most iconic animals of the West, a species that is inextricably bound up with most people’s conception of what the American West is.  In his engrossing new book, “Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West,” Montana writer Michael Punke (who will read in Denver Tuesday at the LoDo Tattered Cover) offers a concise history of the 19th century decline of America’s bison population, which “at the close of the Civil War numbered in the millions, probably in the tens of millions.” The population dwindled to a few hundred animals by the 1890s, making their last stand in the unpoliced acres of the newly established Yellowstone National Park, and Punke details how the determination and passion of a few individuals, most notably the journalist and scientist George Bird Grinnell, preserved the last of the wild buffalo and allowed them to proliferate once again. 

It’s a story that illustrates how robber baron-era greed, political corruption, and economic turmoil that forced unemployed men to exploit the buffalo to eke out a living almost wiped the animal off the face of the continent.  But this tale also offers considerable hope, because as Punke reveals, the work of only a few key people (backed by support from the public) managed to bring about the buffalo’s salvation in an era before much importance was given to the preservation of animal species.  What’s more, Last Stand is a page-turner. 

Even though I sort of knew how the story ended (because I know that the buffalo hasn’t yet gone extinct), I rushed to get through the nail-biting chapters that detail the efforts of Yellowstone’s rangers to prevent poachers from killing the few remaining wild buffalo while they waited for political support from Washington.  One of the villains appropriately sported a mullet: Punke writes that Edgar Howell, a tenacious Yellowstone poacher, “was dirty and unshaven, his hair flowing back in a greasy ‘drake’s tail.’” And one of the heroes is none other than Teddy Roosevelt, who threw his political clout behind the crusade to save the buffalo in the years before he became president.  This is great stuff.

But the real buffalo hero is a somewhat more unassuming man, George Bird Grinnell, who Punke writes is today better known for his “extensive work as an Indian ethnologist.” Grinnell came from a privileged upbringing, living in Audubon Park in Manhattan, and receiving his early schooling from John James Audubon’s widow, Lucy, who first instilled in him a love for natural history.  Grinnell showed no early signs of the intensity and commitment he’d later display; he was a middling student who had to receive rigorous tutoring to gain admittance to Yale and keep his head above water there.  But while at Yale, he had his first formative encounter with the West when he signed up for an expedition with pioneering paleontologist and professor Othniel Charles Marsh (for more about him, see Tom Rea’s Bone Wars: The Excavation Of Andrew Carnegie’s Dinosaur).

Although Grinnell was obliged to spend several years working at his father’s bank (Geo. B. Grinnell and Company) after he graduated from Yale, he went on more Western expeditions and segued into a career that suited him, editing the natural history page of the newly established magazine Forest and Stream; he eventually became the editor-in-chief and owner of the publication.  Punke does an excellent job of using the banking thread of Grinnell’s biography to offer a quick lesson on the robber baron ethos, the political corruption of the times, and the panic of 1873 that left the country in economic turmoil (useful for those of us whose historical knowledge of the period may be buried under layers of dust).

Meanwhile, successive waves of hunters exterminate the buffalo, which was plentiful during Grinnell’s first journey to the West.  At times the buffalo is shot for its meat, at times for its hide, eventually for its bones and trophy heads, but often merely for sport.  By 1885, “Cowboys still stumbled across scattered buffalo, and even a few larger groups…When they did, their instinctive action was usually a hand ‘stretched out for the rifle.’” Punke writes about how some members of the U.S. government believed the extermination of the buffalo was a necessary tool to control the Indians.  He quotes one plains officer, who said, “Only when the Indian becomes absolutely dependent on us for his every need will we be able to handle him.  He’s too independent with the buffalo.”

Grinnell wrote fiery pro-preservation editorials in Forest And Stream and organized a group of powerful men in Washington D.C. to try to convince congressmen to pass laws that would allow for law enforcement within Yellowstone.  He eventually supported efforts to increase the genetic diversity of the Yellowstone herds through breeding with pureblood animals preserved by a few visionary ranchers. 

Anyone who has seen wild buffalo in Yellowstone or in one of the preserves in Kansas or Canada knows how this story ends, with the bison ultimately saved from extinction, but in Last Stand, Punke makes it urgently clear what a close shave it was.  Last Stand is full of fascinating tidbits about buffalo (they can apparently leap up six feet into the air from a standing start, and at times have attracted horses and mules into joining their wild bands), but perhaps more importantly, the book offers an inspiring message about the possibilities for conservation that can still exist even after all hope seems lost, as long as a few passionate individuals persevere until the general public is swayed.

Michael Punke will appear in Denver at the LoDo Tattered Cover’s Rocky Mountain Land Series on Tuesday, July 31 at 7:30 p.m.

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