Today is the anniversary of the Last Great Buffalo Hunt, which took place on this date, 1882, on Indian reservation lands near Hettinger, North Dakata. It happened like this: By 1882, most of the estimated 60 to 75 million buffalo had been killed by white hide hunters -- who killed the buffalo and left the meat to rot on the plains. And so, some 2,000 Teton Sioux Indians gathered in full hunting regalia and proceeded to kill some 5,000 buffalo. It was a statement by the Sioux: "Enough already. You want to see the extermination of our buffalo? We will show you." And so, the last of the free buffalo were gone. Fortunately, the buffalo is not extinct. There are various game preserves where a few buffalo still roam. The State of Arizona used to have an annual buffalo shoot, a stupid, bloody affair memorialized by the novelist Glendon Swarthhout in a book (and a movie) called "Bless the Beasts and the Children."

MODEL: If you want to take a vivid look at the world of the buffalo hunter, read Robert F. Jones's novel "Tie My Bones To Her Back," published by Farrar Straus Giroux in 1996. The New York Times's Book Review said in 1996 that Jones's novel "contrasts the Indians' respectful attitude toward the animal with the wasteful carnage of the hide hunters. Never a sentimentalist, Mr. Jones squarely faces the violence in his characters. He portrays the thrill of the hunt, animal or human, with a lyricism that is often unnerving and a realism that belies the glamour of conquest and adventure."

A note of advice: .

Also born on this day: