A herd, a hide and a 50-year friendship: How the Onondaga Nation brought the buffalo back

Sid Hill eased his pickup truck through a yawning gate and into a snow-hampered pasture.

Nearly 70 buffalo cast expectant, snow-tinged glances up at the approaching vehicle. 

They knew it was feeding time.

Hill, the Tadodaho of the Onondaga Nation, had not come to feed the bison, but rather to watch the feeding. As the hungry bison circled Hill’s pickup, their feed began lumbering up the hill behind them. Mitch Laffin drove a tractor front-loaded with a massive hay bale into the pasture.

Hill remembers feeding the buffalo decades ago, when the herd numbered around 20.

“I never thought it would get this big,” Hill said.

The Onondaga bison herd grew out of an agreement now 50 years old. Neighboring rancher Brad Tiffany raised a small herd on his Lafayette farm and gifted some to the Nation in 1975. Like the Onondaga themselves, the bison — which the Onondaga call dege·yá’gih — withstood the American government’s genocidal campaigns. 

It was, in part, Tiffany who helped them bring buffalo back to the region. Tiffany gifted them 11 buffalo and the Onondaga gave him sassafras. They commemorated the agreement with a treaty depicting their terms.

Most Central New Yorkers have never heard of this agreement. This spring, they’ll have the opportunity to view the treaty at the Ska-Nonh Great Law Of Peace Center. The Haudenosaunee cultural education museum sits on the north shore of Onondaga Lake. 

There in the pasture, Hill thought back to his own time feeding the bison 40 years ago. He smiled while recounting an old story of the herd breaking out of the pasture. He reflected on the woodland bison that once roamed the Tully Valley.

This herd needs care and a steady supply of hay, Hill said, but the bison don’t need much else.

“They’re pretty durable.”

A gory history

Reintroducing American buffalo, or bison, to Central New York was Brad Tiffany’s dream.

Tiffany’s family owned the local Scotch and Sirloin steakhouse franchise, and Brad owned a 250-acre ranch in Lafayette. His son, Lars, said that Brad’s goal to steward American buffalo had its roots in middle school, when Brad learned about the 19th-century near-annihilation of American buffalo.

As the nation chased its “Manifest Destiny” to the gold-laden coasts of California, that western progress carved a bloody path across the Heartland.

In a post-World War II era imbued with patriotism, Brad struggled to reckon his national pride with the brutal, blood-soaked bison history he had learned. Americans drove the continent’s wild buffalo population, which once numbered 30 to 60 million, to near extinction. The National Park Service estimates that by the 1890’s, fewer than 1,000 bison remained.

“To him, it was a huge black eye on this incredible country and nation,” Lars said.

During the “Great Slaughter,” the American government, military, and civilians intertwined the elimination of the American buffalo and Indigenous people. The campaign is often referred to as as the “buffalo genocide.” 

Buffalo were killed for their hides and tongues, but also to reduce their numbers. Herds were seen as a nuisance to railroad construction and operation. Others killed bison for sport. 

Construction of the Transcontinental Railroad severed the Great Plains buffalo into two separate populations, making them more susceptible to hunting.

Theodore Roosevelt, the “conservationist president,” justified the buffalo slaughter as the regrettable means to a necessary end: the erasure and subjugation of Indigenous peoples.

While lamenting the near-annihilation of the American buffalo in 1904, then-president Roosevelt wrote, “Above all, the extermination of the buffalo was the only way of solving the Indian question.”

Estimates vary, but historical consensus approximates that in 1700, at least 5 million Indigenous people lived in what is now the contiguous U.S. 

By 1900, the American government’s century-long conquest reduced the population of these Indigenous people to less than 240,000 – and the population of buffalo to less than 1,000.

“From the standpoint of humanity at large,” Roosevelt wrote in 1904, “the extermination of the buffalo has been a blessing.”

Half a century later, a young Brad Tiffany discovered the gruesome details of that “extermination.”

Tiffany pledged to “help resurrect the bison on this continent,” said his son Lars.

‘I’ve been waiting for you for a long time’

When Scotch and Sirloin’s success put Brad in a financial position to fulfill his pledge, he got right to work in 1970. At that time, the species was still considered endangered. Tiffany acquired 17 buffalo from the National Bison Range in Montana and transported them to his Lafayette ranch. 

That small herd quickly quadrupled.

Tiffany’s bison were at one point 75 strong, making his the largest American buffalo herd East of the Mississippi, according to a 1978 New York Times article on the bison agreement.

Leaders of the neighboring Onondaga Nation took notice of Tiffany’s burgeoning herd. 

Oren Lyons, a traditional Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, recalled seeing the buffalo and waiting before approaching Tiffany to ask about starting a herd. 

The Onondaga had long aspired to see the restoration of buffalo in Central New York – and a thousand year old prophecy foretold that return.

The Tiffany herd had grown large enough that Tiffany was supplying buffalo to breeders. He thought it fitting to supply the Onondaga, too.

Soon, the Nation’s leaders felt it was time to inquire about the herd. One morning, they walked up Tiffany’s driveway. 

Tiffany opened his door to greet the approaching delegation.

“I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”

A constructive treaty

Tiffany told the Onondaga that good fences were prerequisite to the formation of their buffalo herd.

He recommended the Onondaga construct fences that allowed twenty acres per animal. Ten buffalo would need two hundred acres.

Fencing was a foreign concept — Onondaga culture centered around living alongside animals, rather than domesticating them. 

“We had no word for ‘wild,’” Lyons said. 

The Onondaga began building a large pasture for their herd. Once the preparations were set for the buffaloes’ arrival, both parties met again to finalize the details of the transfer. Tiffany would lend the Nation 11 buffalo for six years, with the expectation that the Nation would keep the offspring and return the lended head. In the end, those original buffalo stayed with the Onondaga.

Tiffany reportedly wanted to sign a physical contract, but the Onondaga refused to put pen to paper.

Lyons had the solution.

On New Year’s Day 1975, the Onondaga delivered to Tiffany a treaty that Lyons had hand-crafted. Lyons strung a beaver hide within a wooden circle, and painted the terms of the agreement on the treaty. The artwork depicts 14 chiefs, the Tiffany family, eleven buffalo, sassafras roots, and six winter landscapes that symbolized the duration of the agreement).

Central in the scene: Tiffany and a chief shake hands.

A restorative transfer

While no buffalo herds have roamed New York, there is no doubt bison once lived in the state.

“We didn’t have buffalo here, but we had the buffalo ceremony,” Hill said. “That survived – the buffalo ceremony and buffalo medicine.” 

When Hill says this knowledge survived, he doesn’t simply mean that it has been passed down.

Erasing native populations wasn’t sufficient for a young America with aspirations of Western expansion; the U.S. strove to erase native cultures, traditions, and histories as well.

To this day, the Onondaga use “Hanadagá•yas” to refer to an American president. The word means “town destroyer,’ referring to the April 1779 razing of Onondaga by the U.S. military, on George Washington’s orders.

The attack upended every aspect of Onondagan life, leaving survivors homeless and hungry. Some fled to Canada, while others stayed and rebuilt what they could. The Sullivan Campaign claimed a permanent toll, decimating the proud and peaceful Nation.

The destruction of native peoples and practices was extensive, but not total.

The Onondaga still safeguard the buffalo ceremony and medicinal practices which Hill referred to, wary of previous American deceit and devastation.

The preservation of these practices, and of the buffalo themselves, aligns with ancestral instructions.

Long ago, when the Peacemaker united the Haudenosaunee, he offered a fearsome Onondaga man named Tadodaho the role of overseeing the Grand Council of 50 Chiefs.

As Tadodaho, Hill has the responsibility to ensure the Nation’s actions align with the Seven Generation principle: the concept that people’s actions today prioritize the interests of the next seven generations of descendents.

With an eye to the future, the Onondaga are listening to advice from the past. 

“There were prophecies of animals getting scarce,” Hill said.

A sovereign sustenance

The Onondaga buffalo herd isn’t just a symbol of the Nation’s resilience – it’s a practical food source that strengthens self-reliance. 

Emerson Shenandoah, the director of the Ska-Nonh Great Law of Peace Center, said the buffalo herd reduces the Nation’s reliance on American grocery stores.

“The bison help us to maintain our sovereignty by allowing us to feed ourselves,” Shenandoah said.

Sustenance means more than food. Hill said some Onondagas are leveraging ancestral techniques to craft items out of bones and hides, and the work can be intensive.

“There’s some trying to tan them, the old way, trying to preserve them and the skulls,” Hill said.

“It’s a lot of work just to tan a deer’s, and it’s a smaller hide. But a buffalo hide, it’s huge.”

The buffalo proved a valuable commodity in 2023, when the Onondaga traded 7 buffalo to the Seneca in exchange for an expensive piece of equipment critical for syrup-making. The Onondaga commemorated that deal by naming their syrup brand the Onondaga Nation Seven Buffalo Maple Syrup Company.

The buffalo meat, though, remains a prized item in Onondaga.

Before significant ceremonies, Hill said, the Onondaga cull the herd and dole out buffalo meat. They sometimes distribute it for $1 per pound.

 “And it goes fast,” Hill said. “First come, first served.” 

During some of those ceremonies, Hill said, the Onondaga also donate buffalo meat to the other Haudenosaunee nations.

Since 2018, the Seneca Nation has managed a small buffalo herd in Allegany. When an outbreak of disease ripped through the herd in 2021, the Seneca asked the Onondaga for help.

The Onondaga transferred to them 20 bison.

Native groups from coast to coast now steward around 20,000 bison. According to Lyons, the Onondaga have helped those efforts, sharing buffalo to native groups from here to Montana. 

“That was some of, I think, Brad Tiffany’s wishes,” Hill said, “was to get them out to other nations.”

An agreement honored

Half a century after its inception, the treaty returned home last year.

When Lars Tiffany, who coaches the University of Virginia lacrosse team, traveled back to Central New York last year for a lacrosse game against Syracuse University, he set up a meeting with Lyons, Hill, and Phil Arnold, a SU professor of Indigenous studies. Arnold is the Ska-Nonh Center’s founding director and served from 2012 to 2015.

Tiffany wanted to give back the treaty.

When Americans give treasured items of native origin back to Indigenous groups, the gift is typically intended to acknowledge and apologize for past wrongs. The pillaging of native weapons, crafts, sacred objects, and human remains was so rampant, President George H. W. Bush passed a law in 1990 to facilitate the protection and return of stolen items to native groups.

But the buffalo treaty is not typical history.

As the 50-year anniversary of the bison treaty neared, Tiffany decided that the time was right to commemorate the agreement by teaching the public about the enduring harvests of a neighborly agreement in LaFayette.

“It’s in the spirit of my father and of my mother, of giving to those people who have given us so much,” Tiffany said. “I’ve turned lacrosse into a profession. I learned to play lacrosse from the native people, from the Onondaga people.”

The Haudenosaunee gave Lars another gift when he was invited to serve as head coach of the Haudenosaunee Nationals lacrosse team in 2023 at the World Lacrosse Championships in San Diego.

“I guess there’s a lot of reciprocation going on back and forth, isn’t there?” Tiffany said.

Shenandoah, the Ska-Nonh Center director, said that an Onondaga leatherworker named Shannon Booth restored the leather where it had worn and stretched from age and gravity. The treaty is now at the Center and ready for exhibit.

To Shenendoah, displaying the treaty at the Ska Nonh Center offers threefold educational benefits. Most people in the region probably don’t know about the buffalo herd on the Onondaga farm. The treaty allows the Center to educate guests about the herd’s existence, the herd’s origin through the agreement with Tiffany, and how the herd helps the nation.

“‘This is a cool piece of artwork, but why is it here?’” Shenandoah said. “Well, it’s here because we can tell this story of what it does, what it did.”

That treaty continues to do what it did: Provide sustenance to the people of Onondaga through an honored agreement.

“I thought we were good servants of the bison,” Lars said, “but I think the Onondaga people are even better.”

A stark warning

“The fight is on,” Oren Lyons repeats as he describes the existential climate crisis bearing down on humanity’s unsustainable status quo.

Lyons is proud of the buffalo herd, but fears conservation efforts like the restoration of American buffalo are not enough to stem the rising tide of the climate crisis. Too many people, Lyons says, and not enough resources to go round.

At 95, the world-renowned elder fears future generations will inherit a world that has not been stewarded and protected by their ancestors.

“Secular society can’t even think two generations ahead,” Lyons said.

He feels the rising tide of climate catastrophe may be the moment prophesied by a Haudenosaunee leader in 1799, who received a message from spirits foretelling an existential disaster.

“They hadn’t killed off all the buffaloes yet. They hadn’t killed off all the passenger pigeons yet. They hadn’t killed off all the native people yet, 1790, but they were moving in that direction,” Lyons said at a 2021 forum on Indigenous food sovereignty. “And at that time, 1799, we were instructed that it would occur.” 

At a time when Lyons feels humanity cannot afford to idle any longer and must take radical collective action to re-route the planet’s climatic course, he is discouraged by a new federal administration promising to “drill, baby, drill.”

But he has not lost hope.

“The fight is on,” Lyons insists.

Cooperation, not conflict, is crucial to the preservation of the planet, Lyons believes.

But the most vital action humans need to take, Lyons says, is a drastic restructuring of our individual and collective priorities.

Lyons likes to recall his work with the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival, where he collaborated with religious leaders like Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama, as well as political leaders like USSR president Mikhail Gorbachev and then-Senator Al Gore.

Through dialogue, the group hoped to craft a plan of action to address the oncoming environmental crisis. The Forum met around the world from 1985 to 1991.

At the final meeting in Tokyo, Akio Matsumura, the group’s executive coordinator, asked the leaders to sum up their work.

“After all those meetings, our recommendation came down to four words,” Lyons said.

“Value change for survival.”