The True Story of Winged Buffalo

Archaeologists studying Native American buffalo, or Bison, hunting sites in North America learned early in the twentieth century about a technique used by hunters to kill a large number of buffalo at one time (if they had just asked a Native American, they'd have learned it much sooner, but that's not the way of the archaeologist; it wouldn't be scientific!). Native Americans would have the women and children line up to make a V-shape with the narrow end at the edge of a cliff. They would bring rocks and brush to make the V more secure. Meanwhile, the men would sneak up on a herd of buffalo, and frighten them into a stampede. They would "herd" the stampede towards the V, and once the buffalo were inside that shape and running, the only end was over the cliff. By that method, hundreds of buffalo could die in a single day!

The band that had managed the hunt, often with other bands of the same nation, would then skin the buffalo, and spend some time there feasting on fresh meat, and drying other meat over a fire so they would have food through the harsh winters of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain foothills. Most of the bison killed would be used; bones and scraps would be left for coyotes and wolves, but enough bones remained, with tool marks, that archaeologists could tell what had happened.

But the archaeologists soon realized that over time, back in those hunting days, the number of Bison killed grew smaller and smaller. Surely it wasn't because of a reduced population; when white men first saw buffalo on the Great Plains, they reported vast herds that covered the plains like an ocean. No, it had to have been some other reason. But what could explain this?

A clever archaeologist, Dr. Whunu Wotapand, working with a paleontologist, Dr. Ainchen Bonz, made an astonishing discovery: they found the secret sacred Bison Burial Grounds, in a remote area of Montana! And in amongst those old remains, they made an even more fascinating discovery: a heretofore unknown subspecies of bison; a subspecies with wings that were much like those of so-called "flying" squirrels. They could tell by the knobs on the leg bones where the wing tissue had attached. These buffalo didn't so much fly as soar; when the leapt off a great (or not-so-great) height, they would extend their legs to the sides, left out to the left, right to the right, and the sturdy tissue between them made a sort of glider, so that they could soar over hunters and land safely, far from danger. Dr. Wotapand christened this subspecies, which had evolved from the original Bison bison, Bison bison aviatus, or Flying Buffalo.

But why were none left when white men reached the plains? What happened to the Flying Buffalo? Dr. Wotapand worked tirelessly, examining Flying Buffalo bones wherever he found them, and it wasn't long before he found the answer. The clever Native Americans, realizing that the buffalo had changed and could no longer be killed simply by running them off a cliff, changed their tactics. Now half of the hunters, those who were the very best with bows and arrow, and with spears, hid at the bottom of the cliffs. When the Flying Buffalo took to the air off the edge, they would shoot their arrow or throw their spears up at the great beasts. Those who were hit would fall to the ground, and the nations went hungry no more. However, because the evolved subspecies didn't represent a large population of Bison bison, they were soon hunted to extinction, as perhaps the woolly mammoth had been long before them.

And how did Dr. Wotapand figure this out, you ask? Simple. He found several kill sites at the foot of cliffs where many of the buffalo, all with the knobbed legs, had arrow or spear points embedded in their chests, along with the broken bones from falling. And after the dates of those sites, the number of normal Bison bison killed merely from falling, began to steadily increase in kill sites again.

And that is the real true story of the Flying Buffalo, and what today's buffalo wings are named after.

(Note: this is purely fictional. No offense is implied or intended towards either archaeologists or Native Americans.)