A Pennsylvania Bison Hunt
Bison with Persimmon-Apple-Red Bud Relish and Red Cabbage
The bison, or as it’s misnamed -buffalo, is known as a symbol of the American West, but bison used to roam in Pennsylvania too, the East Coast had a species of bison known as the Wood Bison, which are bigger and darker than the Plains Bison.
The inspiration for this dish comes from a book published in 1915 by Henry Wharton Shoemaker- A Pennsylvania Bison Hunt
The author gives the range of the bison as:
“…approximately just west of the Susquehanna showing where the herds and then the stragglers lingered until the last years of the eighteenth century. This would bring the range a trifle west of Harrisburg, of Liverpool, of Sunbury, Lewisburg, Lock Haven, Emporium and Bradford. West of that the Buffalo’s range extended unbrokenly to the Rocky Mountains”
Mr. Shoemaker gives a quote from an old-timer (90 years old) named Mr. Quiggle, from Clinton County, and he remembers the bison and the famous “Buffalo Path”
“When the persimmons became ripe on the Bald Eagle Mountains it was time for the bison’s southern migration. In single file they crossed the Susquehanna River just below the Great Island, a short distance from Lock Haven… When the red bud was in bloom it was time to look for the Northerly migration.
The author has a chapter talking to an old bison hunter and a chapter relaying a story of how the last remaining bison in PA were killed. A sad tale of starving and scared animals accidently trampling a family, which caused the locals to exact revenge.
Much has been said about the destruction of the bison in the Midwest, killing the animals in great numbers and only taking the tongues, and how the government was encouraging the wholesale slaughter of the bison, because it was the Native American’s symbol and main food source on the plains.
Mr. Shoemaker devotes a considerable amount of pages in the book chiding his fellow countrymen and his anger is almost leaping off the page. We’ll end with one of his rants, and hope we have learned from the past.
“It was only when the white hunters came, men of lowly origin, whose forebears were not allowed to carry firearms, or enter in the game preserves and parks of the gentry of the old country, who slaughtered the bison without rime or reason. They killed for the sheer love of gore and brutality, they killed until ammunition and strength became exhausted, they killed lest somebody else later on have something to kill. In Pennyslvania these rapacious beings speedily wiped out the tens of thousands of buffaloes, as well as the moose, elk, brown bears, beaver, otters, fishers, heath cocks, paroquets, pileated woodpeckers, wild pigeons, and other valuable and necessary animals and birds. It is a horrible story to relate, but it is not ended, as the descendants of these gauche marauders have ravished and burned forests, and now their factories pollute our rivers and streams and kill the fish.”
Bison from Fossil Farms, persimmons and cabbage from Green Meadow Farm, red bud from Fishtown
