On September 3, 2024, Rebecca Toov of the University Archives, forwarded a clipping from the April 9, 1898, edition of The Ariel, the University of Minnesota’s student newspaper.
We wish to make a correction in regard to a statement which appeared in last week's issue about the family group which lately appeared in our zoological museum. They are not sea-lions but fur seals, and were presented to this institution by G.A. Clark, '91, now of Leland Stanford University while on a visit to Alaska as clerk of the government bureau of investigation. By the way, you ought to see the 'happy family' case to which the seal group has been consigned. It is doubtful if any museum in the country has so complete a menagerie in so small a space. Eagles, pelicans, and other birds sit contentedly on the backs of the moose. One moose has a bear on its back, while another moose stands over a bear. The sacred cow stands patiently supporting a deer, while General Custer's old dog looks mournfully out from among the lot unable to find even room to lie down.
It is a wonderful description of a cluttered museum suffering neglect due to its curators’ diverted attention. By 1898, the General Museum of the University of Minnesota had for many years served multiple masters. It was the official archive for the Geological and Natural History Survey of Minnesota overseen by Newton Horace Winchell but was simultaneously the geology department’s teaching museum run by Professor Christopher Webber Hall - as well as the home for the University’s growing zoological collections under Professor Henry Francis Nachtrieb. The General Museum was even home for the university’s nascent anthropology collections. All of which resulted in disorganized curation as the collections quickly outgrew all available space.
Rebecca forwarded the note because she knew of my interest in Cardigan, Libby Custer’s dog, which is referenced at the end of the note. However, the preceding phrase, ‘The sacred cow stands patiently…’ has more general importance.
Its casual inclusion in the student newspaper confirms the University community knew the spiritual and cultural significance of item 1595 in Volume 2 of the General Museum Registrar, Bos Americanus Gm. (albino). The mount, a white buffalo, was on display not solely because of its rarity, but also because of its religious importance to Plains Indian Nations.
Later described as an ‘albino bison (small size),’ the mount came to the museum in 1885. According to the museum registrar, it was presented by John Sargent Pillsbury, who at the time was three years past his tenure as Minnesota’s eighth governor but who also led the university’s Board of Regents from 1863 until his death in 1901. To date, I have not found any other reference to the buffalo in The Ariel or contemporary Minneapolis and Saint Paul newspapers. The only other known reference in the university archives is a December 29, 1916, letter from Thomas Sandler Roberts, then Associate Curator of the Zoological Museum to George E. Vincent, University President, requesting that Roberts be allowed to dispose of sixty-nine mounts. Roberts claimed those mounted specimens were not only in very poor shape but posed a danger to other museum exhibits because they were pest-ridden. The 1885 white buffalo was one of those sixty-nine taxidermy mounts. Along with the rest of the General Museum’s biological and botanical samples, the buffalo had been transferred over to Robert’s care when a new Zoology building was constructed in 1916. Because of its condition though, Roberts was loathe to accept it.
President Vincent asked Dean John Black Johnston to confirm Roberts’ impression of the mounts but once he was assured the mounts were vermin infested, Vincent brought the question to the January 31, 1917, Board of Regents meeting. The regents’ authorization for the mounts’ disposal was forwarded to Roberts on February 16, 1917, and the white buffalo mount was apparently disposed of a brief time later. Although oddly, despite the 1917 documentation regarding the white buffalo’s disposal, twenty-two years later, in his 1939 ‘Annals of the Museum of Natural History,’ Roberts wrote that ‘Many of these specimens, including the white buffalo, are still in the present museum.’
Extract from minutes of Jan. 31, 1917, Regents Meeting concerning approval of mounts disposal.
Hence, for thirty-two years, the University of Minnesota displayed a white buffalo mount, knowing of its spiritual significance to Plains Indian cultures. While dismaying, that decision was typical of a time when museums placed little value on Indigenous beliefs.
Yet, nothing in our museum’s records tells of the white buffalo’s origin. Where was it born? How did Pillsbury acquire it for the University of Minnesota’s General Museum? A quick search of Pillsbury’s papers at the Minnesota Historical Society failed to yield any information. However, an online search of 1885 newspapers provided a promising clue.
In 1884, the World Cotton Centennial, or World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition, was held in New Orleans to commemorate the centennial of the first cotton shipment from the United States to England. Unlike later, more successful World’s Fairs, like Chicago’s 1893 World's Columbian Exposition with its famous ‘White City’ and first Ferris Wheel, the Cotton Centennial struggled. Its organization was marred by rumors of corruption, cost overruns, and scandalous funding misappropriations that forced its early closure. Despite its myriad problems though, the Cotton Centennial still drew over a million visitors to New Orleans and housed exhibits from thirty-eight states, seven territories, and over two dozen other countries.
Newton Horace Winchell, with his son, Horace Vaughn Winchell’s help, played a pivotal role in Minnesota’s contribution to the fair, bring carloads of geological and biological samples to a display that included a recreation of Minnehaha Falls, along with an American Pelican and a pair of albino deer.
Cover of guidebook for 1884 Cotton Centennial World's Fair with descriptions of Minnesota and Dakota exhibits.
However, next to Minnesota’s exhibit in the U.S. Building was the Dakota exhibit. And that exhibit included a white buffalo mount, valued at $1,000, owned by James J. Hill, the president of the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba railway. The exhibit identified the white buffalo as the only one ever seen in Dakota, confirming its birth on traditional Lakota lands. In its report of the exposition, the Sioux Valley News of Canton, Dakota cast a bizarrely wide net to double down on racism by describing the mount as ‘A white buffalo, said to be sacred to the savage Sioux, as the white elephant of Siam is in the country of abnormal twins, …’. Although the Cotton Centennial guidebook did not identify Hill as the mount's owner, his ownership was confirmed in descriptions of the exhibit published in many Dakota newspapers.
The General Museum Registrar records Pillsbury as the presenter of the museum's white buffalo but it is almost certain that the General Museum’s white buffalo and Hill’s mount from the Dakota exhibit at the Cotton Centennial were the same animal. Considering the rarity of white buffalo, it would be extraordinary to have two distinct white buffalo mounts in 1885 that were both owned by wealthy Minnesotans. And the white buffalo mount only arrived at the General Museum after the World Cotton Centennial closed. Parsimony alone suggests a social or commercial transfer resulted in Hill’s mount being presented to the museum by Pillsbury.
Contemporary newspapers claimed there were five ‘white buffalo’ in the United States from 1884 to early 1885. Besides Hill’s mount at the Cotton Centennial, there were four living 'white buffalo' circulating with the W. W. Cole’s, Sells Brothers, Jno. Robinson, and Barnum and London circuses. However, those latter claims reflected 19th century circus bunkum. The Coles’ animal was supposedly captured from a non-existent herd of Australian buffalo. Later, John B. Doris, another showman agitated by Cole’s attack on his own show, revealed that Cole’s snow-white buffalo was actually a yak. While the Sell’s Brothers’ ‘pure white buffalo’ was perennially ‘captured in Dakota the previous February’ - no matter which year the circus arrived in town. While I have been unable to learn enough of Robinson’s circus to identify his ‘white Colorado buffalo,’ Barnum was infamous for his love of fraudulent displays. Consequently, the only white buffalo in the United States in 1884 not associated with 19th century circus humbug was the taxidermy mount displayed at the Cotton Centennial. Which then probably made its way via Hill’s Minnesota ties to the University of Minnesota’s General Museum.
Even that mount’s authenticity as a white buffalo was questioned by others. In a description of a September 1875 buffalo hunt published in The Northwest Magazine, the writer, A. L. O., mentions hearing ‘of a “white” buffalo among the display of taxidermists’ articles in the Dakota department at the New Orleans Exposition, but those who have seen the specimen say it is far from a pure white.’ However, the author’s description was neither firsthand nor objective, as he was motivated to denigrate the mount to enhance his own story. His account continues ‘It is therefore safe to say that the only white buffalo deserving the name, of which there is any authentic account, is the one I am about to describe.’
We have no photographs or paintings of the General Museum’s white buffalo so there is no way now to determine its precise coloration. Although rare, 19th century white bison were of three main types: true albinos, which lack any pigmentation and have pink to reddish eyes; leucistic animals with white fur but blue eyes; or buffalo born with brown eyes and a white coat that turns darker as they mature. More recently, bison-cattle crossbreeds are sometimes born with white coloration due to their cattle ancestry. Both the General Museum Registrar’s original entry and Roberts 1916 description refer to the mount as an albino buffalo, but we cannot tell whether it was a true albino or a leucistic animal. However, the difference would not alter the animal’s significance to Plains Indian society. Regardless, it was born a sacred white buffalo.
A telling characteristic of the General Museum’s white buffalo was its size, which Roberts noted as being small. The buffalo was a calf or subadult, targeted by hunters in its youth and brought down on the plains of the Lakota homeland because of its coat’s rarity.
conclusion
Although the General Museum was a remarkable asset to the University of Minnesota, it was also a product of its time and reflected the racism of its contemporary Euro-American society. The museum's exhibits and collections included many items it should never have held, ones that would be considered completely inappropriate now. Among those was the mount of a young bison, killed before its time in defiance of its spiritual meaning to Plains Indian nations, simply to embellish the reputation of wealthy industrialists. Although long destroyed, we should at least acknowledge its existence and our institution’s culpability in putting it on display for over three decades.