An Interesting and Odd Present: Transporting American Bison across the Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

An Interesting and Odd Present:Transporting American Bison across the Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century Bradley Folsom (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution An illustration of an American bison from Francisco López de Gómara, Historia general de las Indias y todo lo acaescido en ellas dende que se ganaron hasta agora y La conquista de Mexico, y de la Nueva España (1553). This illustration is first known European rendering of the iconic grazer of the North American Great Plains. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. In the 1870s, long-time San Antonio resident Antonio Menchaca dictated his memoirs for publication, hoping to preserve the Tejano legacy in Texas.1 In addition to featuring important events from the author’s life, the memoirs include local legends Menchaca had learned growing up in Texas. One such story, entitled, “The First Buffaloes Ever sent to Europe are sent from San Antonio,” details what Menchaca believed to be the first time an American bison—more commonly known as buffalo—crossed the Atlantic Ocean. According to Menchaca, in 1760, a hunter named Carbreo captured buffalo from the large herds surrounding San Antonio and “took them over to Spain,” where he presented the animals as a gift to the king. Upon receiving the animals, the monarch was apparently so “pleased with the interesting and odd present,” he “asked Carbreo to name the reward he desired.” The modest hunter, having spent his savings undertaking the voyage, requested only that the king pay for his voyage back to Texas. The king did so and, in spite of Carbreo’s protests, gave the hunter a pension and a promotion to the rank of lieutenant. Upon returning to San Antonio, Carbreo gave up hunting, became an “industrious citizen,” and the tale of the first buffalo crossing became a local legend.2 [End Page 1] To a large extent, Menchaca’s tale is accurate, but he left out important details and his names and dates are inaccurate—understandable errors considering that the author was writing almost a century after the event took place and likely relied on stories he had heard as a child to reconstruct the tale. Just as Menchaca claimed, in the mid-eighteenth century a hunter from Texas captured American bison from the Southern Plains and transported them across the Atlantic Ocean to be presented to the king of Spain. The king did indeed reward the hunter’s efforts with a promotion and a monetary reward. However, the hunter was not named Cabreo, the Atlantic crossing took place twenty years after the given date, and the motivation for making the voyage went beyond an altruistic desire to please the king. In addition, Menchaca never explained how the hunter managed to keep his animals alive for the transatlantic crossing and, through no fault of his own, was mistaken in his claim that the first American buffalo to cross the Atlantic Ocean came from Texas.3 In the eighteenth century, leaders in France, Spain, Britain, and the United States tried to transport living American bison over long distances to study, to exhibit as curiosity items, and to domesticate for monetary gain. Among those seeking or receiving buffalo in the eighteenth century were Pennsylvania proprietor and son of William Penn, Thomas Penn; the king of England, George II; French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon; United States presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; and the king of Spain, Carlos III. Many of these men assumed they could succeed where Indians and prior generations of Euro-Americans had failed in taming and breeding buffalo for their wool, milk, meat, and labor as beasts of burden. Scientific advancements of the Enlightenment, a burgeoning naturalist movement, and improvements in animal husbandry inspired this optimism.4 Unlike the many other animals studied by naturalists or paraded before European courts in the eighteenth century, the American bison’s resistance to capture, confinement, domestication, and forced herding frustrated most who sought to transport the creatures away from their natural habitats to distant locations in the United States and Europe. As the men sent to capture buffalo quickly learned, the notoriously ornery...