Society has slowly acknowledged that we have misnamed and misrepresented people, places, and things for much of history.

There is a culture of “getting it right” that is making it’s way through our society and we feel it is certainly time for the venerable North American Bison to join this cause.

When the first Europeans set foot in North America they found a noble beast they had never seen before. Hundreds of thousands of these creatures roamed the expansive plains and prairies. The first families who had lived along side and relied heavily on these animals for survival had their own names for them:

• Iinniiwa in Blackfoot
• Tatanka in Lakota,
• Ivanbito in Navajo
• Kuts in Paiute
• Yanasi in Cherokee
• Cuhtz in Comanche
• Yvnnash in Choctaw

However, history records that the word buffalo is derived from the French “bœuf,” a name given to bison when French fur trappers working in the US in the early 1600s saw the animals. The word bœuf came from what the French knew as true buffalo, animals living in Africa and Asia.

Misnamed. It’s that simple. They were misnamed. The North American Bison is NOT a buffalo. It really doesn’t matter how long we’ve been calling them something else. It really doesn’t matter if it’s inconvenient, difficult, or even costly to change. It only matters that they deserve to be called by their real name.

So call them Tatanka or Cuhtz or Bison. Just don’t call them buffalo.