This is “Big Medicine”, one of the most famous bison (“buffalo”) in the world.
Big Medicine was a white buffalo born on Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation in 1933. The odds of a white bison being born is one in five million births. Natives consider white buffalo to be sacred and to bring good luck.
Big Medicine spent his life on the National Bison Range and received a special diet and veterinary care throughout his life. He lived to the ripe age of 26 — old for a bison. He was six feet at his hump, twelve feet long from nose to tail, and weighed 1,900 pounds.
While alive, he was the #2 tourist attraction in all of Montana, second only to Yellowstone National Park. He has spent the decades since he died at the Museum of Montana, which is where we saw him in October 2022.
Recently the Montana Historical Society Board of Trustees voted unanimously to return the mounted white bison back to the tribes. This was at the request of the tribes because of Big Medicine’s significance to them. Big Medicine will be transferred when the proper conditions (e.g. air-conditioned display space) are available on the reservation.
