The Native American tribes that lived in buffalo country all had
stories about white bison. They were considered sacred by some and significant
by all. In the early 1800's, when there were possibly seventy to
eighty million buffalo roaming the plains, Even if they weren't nearly that
rare, they were certainly more rare than albino humans. Secondly, the lack
of pigment in the eyes of albinos leave a large portion nearly
or totally blind, so the majority of those that were born probably
didn't make it through the first year, By 1830 there were an
estimated forty million bison left in North America...by 1865... fifteen
million...in 1926 there were 4,400 left. It was logically assumed that
the recessive gene for the white coat had been lost in the
slaughter, and that the full albinos had happened too rarely to ever
be seen again.

Then in May of 1933, on the National Bison Range in western
Montana, a white bull calf with ice-blue eyes, brown horns, and
a curious brown top-notch was born in captivity. They called him
"Big Medicine" and he was soon to become quite a tourist attraction.
Not being a full albino, he didn't have the vision problems that
traditionally plagued his kind. He grew into one of the major herd bulls.

On August 20, 1994, a white calf with brown eyes, nose and
tail-tip named Miracle. People left gifts for the buffalo that is
considered to be a "symbol of rebirth" for the Native American community.
When the calf's winter coat grew in, the calf turned deep brown,
but the people didn't seem to mind. In the story of the
White Buffalo Woman, a major religious figure from the Lakota People's history,
the Woman, who appeared as a white buffalo, changed colors many times
before turning to white. Miracle was not the last white bison to born.
There were four born in two locations in 1996. On April 27,
on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, a white buffalo calf
was born at Joe Merrival's ranch. The calf, named "Rainbow", only lived
for 25 hours before dying of the scours, a diarrhea-like condition.
The very next month, on May 9, another white calf, "Medicine Wheel"
was born on the same ranch.

Another female, the first calf of a two-year old cow,
and was a full albino, with pink eyes and creamy white hooves
and horns. She was named "White Cloud" and eventually leased to the
National Buffalo Museum in Jamestown, North Dakota, where she lives today. She
is in good health, though her eyes are sensitive to the light,
but for some reason she has not attracted as much attention as "Miracle"
or even "Medicine Wheel". There are roughly 130,000 bison in North America today.