TRINIDAD -- Buddy the buffalo is really Buddy the American bison.

Still mistakenly identified as a buffalo, the bison was a principal resource of the Plains Indians, furnishing them with food, skins for shelter and boats, bones for tools and utensils, and "buffalo chips" for fuel.

An estimated 30 million prairie bison wandered the grasslands from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains when white settlers first arrived. However, there were fewer than 600 in 1889 when the government enacted its first conservation laws to protect the bison.
Today, an estimated 310,000 bison are believed to be in existence throughout the United States.

They are found only in protected areas mainly in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Colorado. The largest free-roaming herds are in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

The word "buffalo" actually refers to "any of several large wild oxen of he family Bovidae, as in water buffalo, according to Webster's College Dictionary.

Bison, meanwhile, refers to the "North American" species of the buffalo, having a high head and high, humped shoulders.

And what does Buddy, the Trinidad bison, think of all of this?

Nothing, says his owner, Sharon Bahr, "because Buddy doesn't think he's a (bison) anyway."

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