James Philip

James "Scotty" Philip

Bison hunting - bison lie dead in the snow (1872)

American bison

Historical map showing the areas where James Philip worked. Fort Robinson, Nebraska, is at the bottom left

James "Scotty" Philip (born April 30, 1858 in Dallas , Morayshire , Scotland , † July 23, 1912 in Philip, South Dakota ) was an American rancher, haulier and politician. The village of Philip is named after him, the seat of the administration of Haakon County in South Dakota, which he founded as a post office. Scotty Philip is considered to be the man who saved the American bison from extinction.

Life

Scotty Philip was born in 1858 on Auchness Manor near Dallas, County Morayshire, in the Scottish Highlands. Even as a child he was fascinated by stories about the Wild West. When he was only 15 he emigrated to America, to his older brother George in Victoria, Kansas . But the young Scotty didn't like life on his brother's farm, the long working hours and the lack of variety. When George Armstrong Custer's illegal expedition found gold in the Black Hills in 1874 , the young Scot could no longer be stopped. He moved to Cheyenne , Wyoming , an area that was designated as a Native American hunting area under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 as long as there was enough bison to hunt. This fatal text of the treaty led to the fact that white adventurers, settlers and criminal elements hunted down the mighty animals that formed the livelihood of the Indians. Scotty himself was deeply shaken by the massacre.

A large group of prospectors gathered in Cheyenne who wanted to try their luck in the Black Hills. But after the Treaty of Fort Laramie, parts of the area belonged to the Great Sioux Reservation and were therefore taboo for whites. The Black Hills were and still are sacred mountains for the Lakota Sioux. The federal government tried to prevent the prospectors from entering the area through the presence of the army. Scotty worked as a ranch helper to save enough money to go on a gold digger expedition to the Black Hills with other fortune-tellers. But the group was out of luck. The US Army discovered them and expelled them from the area several times. Nor did Scotty find any gold.

He had had enough of prospecting for gold and was wondering another way to get rich. He then tried his luck at Fort Laramie , Wyoming . There he worked for a short time as a coachman for the government. He then moved to Fort Robinson in northwestern Nebraska to work as a courier for the US Army. He also worked as a cowboy for one of the first cattle breeders in the area. He collected hay for the US Army at Fort Robinson, whose presence there grew. He bought tools and supplied the post in the winter of 1877. He built his first ranch on Crow Butte, eight miles from Fort Robinson. With the money he saved, he bought his own herd of cattle, horses and his own transport wagon. He decided to raise cattle himself.

At Fort Robinson he also met Sarah Laribee, whom he married in 1879. Sarah was the daughter of Joe Laribee, his closest neighbor in Crow Butte, a French man who was married to a Cheyenne . After his marriage, he moved to Clay Creek in what is now Stanley County , South Dakota, where he built a ranch and transportation company. He organized cargo from Nebraska to the Black Hills. The freight business made him wealthy. In 1881 he moved his activities to Grindstone Creek, near today's Philip. There he founded a post office with his neighbor Dan Powell, which was later relocated to Philip, which was named after him. At that time the whole area was still part of the Great Sioux Reservation . But since Scotty was married to an Indian, he was able to raise cattle without hindrance. He leased 169,000 acres (685 km²) of the Lower Brule Reservation from the Bureau of Indian Affairs for a price of 3.5 cents per acre. His herd of cattle comprised around 40,000 animals and was looked after by 65 cowboys.

Scotty met Pete Dupree, who had managed to save five calves from destruction in the last great bison hunt in 1881. After his death, he bought the herd from his son-in-law Doug Carlin for $ 10,000. He and his helpers built a 65 km², fenced, special enclosure on his ranch near Fort Pierre for the herd, which then numbered around 50 animals. A few years later, the herd consisted of 1,000 animals that he grazed on government-leased land along the Missouri. This was perhaps the first tourist attraction in South Dakota. Visitors could watch the buffalo from boats. It was the largest remaining herd of bison that various national parks used as a basis for building their own populations. Without Scotty's efforts, the bison would likely have become extinct.

In 1898 he was elected to the South Dakota Senate for the Democratic Party. In 1911, Scotty Philip died unexpectedly of a stroke. He was now known throughout the Wild West as the bison savior. Many people came to his funeral. A special train carried hundreds of mourners to Philip for his funeral.

In 2011, 100 years after his death, the documentary filmmaker Justin Koehler made a 60 minute film about the life of Scotty Philip called "The Buffalo King".

Web links

• Scotty Philip: Saving the buffalo (English)
• Scotty Philip, The man who saved the buffalo (English)  ( page no longer available )
• The Man who saved the Buffalo (English)  ( page no longer available )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Scotty Philip, the man who saved the buffalo, Wayne C Lee 1975
2. ↑ These stories, mostly glorified misrepresentations, appealed to him, and in the spring of 1874, at the age of fifteen, Philip left Scotland to follow his older brother George to a settlement in Victoria, Kansas. ( Memento of the original from June 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ In consideration of the advantages and benefits conferred by this treaty and the many pledges of friendship by the United States, the tribes who are parties to this agreement hereby stipulate that they will relinquish all right to occupy permanently the territory outside their reservations as defined in , but yet reserve the right to hunt on any lands north of North Platte, and on the Republican Fork of the Smoky Hill river, so long as the buffalo may range thereon in such numbers as to justify the chase.
4. ↑ By the spring of 1877, James "Scotty" Philip had made up his mind to leave the Black Hills. He had spent the winter months sporadically trekking out to scratch and dig for the glittering gold dust, eager for a miracle, but with no tangible luck.
5. ↑ The Post Quartermaster, realizing there would be great need for winter feed, began offering $ 15 for each ton of hay delivered to the post. Scotty seized the opportunity, using all his savings to purchase used haying equipment from the local Indian agent, and quickly locating some excellent, unclaimed hay meadows reasonably safe and close by.
6. ↑ Joe Laribee, a Frenchman with a Cheyenne wife what Scotty's nearest neighbor along the river.
7. ↑ At his peak, Scotty, with as many as 65 cowboys in his employment, owned an estimated 40,000 head of cattle and hundreds of horses. Scotty was quick to recognize that the "open range" grass, as he had known it, would inevitably be divided into small, fenced quarter- and half-sections. To continue to operate on such a large scale, he would have to contract with the Indian Bureau for the last "open range" grassland available. Being a "squaw-man", as he called himself, he again had priority, and signed a lease for nearly eight townships (169,000 acres) on the Lower Brule Indian Reservation for 3.5 cents per acre. He built a third ranch headquarters along Cedar Creek in Lyman County, using it regularly until his death in 1911.
8. ↑ Shortly after learning of the death of Pete Dupree, who, while participating in the last great Buffalo hunts 20 years previous, had saved five buffalo calves, perhaps saving the buffalo from extinction in South Dakota, Scotty contacted Dupree's son-in-law, Doug Carlin, and made an offer to buy all the surviving buffalo on the Dupree ranch. A deal was made for $ 10,000
9. ^ For an annual lease of $ 50, Scotty was assigned 3500 acres of unclaimed Government land "to be used as a Buffalo Park along the banks of the Missouri." It became perhaps South Dakota's first tourist attraction. "Excursion boats" brought tourists to see the buffalo
10. ↑ A candid examination of the life of 'The Buffalo King', James (Scotty) Philip, who overcome countless years of this nation's wanton buffalo slaughter to become a recognizable leader in the preservation of our iconic American bison.