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In honor of National Bison Day, Veryl Goodnight shares her bronze sculpture, “The Sage” and her family history with American Bison, as well as her personal connection to a bison calf named Charlie.
“The Sage” represents the simple majesty of a mature bull bison moving through the sagebrush of his native prairie. When viewing a recent exhibit on bison, I was struck by the fact that the vast majority of depictions were of the buffalo either dead or being killed. An artist brings their own experience to a work of art and my viewpoint is influenced by the history of Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight and their role in helping save bison during the slaughter of the late 1800’s.
Charles Goodnight is best known as a cattleman, but what may be his most important legacy came to light in the late 1990s. This very legacy was initiated by the compassion and vision of his wife, Mary Ann Goodnight. From 1878 until their passing, the Goodnights devoted their lives to bringing bison back from the brink of extinction.
The Goodnights settled in the Palo Duro Canyon in 1876, during the height of the great buffalo slaughter. Mary Ann revolted against the senseless slaughter, and finally persuaded her husband to protect the small number of buffalo that had taken refuge in a corner of the Palo Duro Canyon. Goodnight’s cowboys roped two calves and brought them to Mary Ann to care for. These two calves were the beginning of the Goodnight herd.
Progeny from the herd helped to rebuild the bison population across the United States, including the herd in Yellowstone National Park. After Charles Goodnight’s death in 1929, the bison again reverted to the wild in the Palo Duro Canyon. The herd was rounded up during the winter of 1997/98 and DNA tested before being placed in their new home at Cap Rock State Park. To everyone’s amazement, it was discovered that Goodnight’s Bison herd was DNA unique from the bison in the North. The Goodnights had inadvertently saved an entire subspecies from sure extinction.
Ancestors of the calves Mary Ann bottle-fed, are now protected forever in Cap Rock State Park.
My connection to bison became very personal when raising an orphaned Buffalo calf named Charlie in order to tell the story of my ancestors. When I learned this story, it was mine to sculpt, and I set out to borrow a bison calf to create “Back from the Brink.” My husband, Roger, and I flew Charlie Buffalo from Idaho to our home in Santa Fe when he was 7 days old, and thus began our own remarkable journey raising the calf. In “Back from the Brink,” Charlie Buffalo modeled as the two calves wrapped protectively around Mary Ann Goodnight, while she bottle fed one, staring into the distance, confronting the ruthless destruction of the time. The events that followed, became a full-length book by Richard D. Rosen, titled A Buffalo in the House. (Available on Amazon)
In “The Sage,” I wanted to present a living, breathing bull bison – an individual with the will to live. Loosing Charlie to pneumonia is still painful, and it has taken all these years before I was able to return to this subject. Perhaps “The Sage” is what Roger and I hoped Charlie could have become.
