The Last Buffalo

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The Last Buffalo is my effort to record what has happened to this changing prairie and its effects on my extended family and me. The title, The Last Buffalo, is meant as a metaphor for what I see is a rapidly changing and apparently disappearing way of life. We, the descendants of the prairie settlers, are perhaps like the wild buffalo, unknowing and/or puzzled about the forces that are shaping and changing our environment from the familiar past to an uncertain future.

The wild buffalo are gone. We in the central part of South Dakota who are engaged with the land are becoming fewer. The Last Buffalo is a tribute to the people who settled this wonderful and, in many ways beautiful, land that, while having given us bounty, has also extracted a human toll for being settled.

I have attempted to write prose, but what I do write seems more strongly to resemble poetry. Most of the poems that I write I consider to be little stories, some based on actual occurrences and others being composites produced from a lot of little stories that I have combined into a single poem that is meant to be a generalization. The book does, I feel, have a beginning that moves toward an end.

I have often referred to The Last Buffalo as a book of themed poetry, and I would like to think that someone in the future will be able to say to themselves after reading it, "Oh, so THAT'S how things were then."

Bruce Roseland, author


About the Author


Bruce Roseland was born on a cold November morning in 1951 in central South Dakota where he has spent his entire life except for attending college. After 2 1/2 years at South Dakota State University, he transferred to the University of North Dakota, earning both bachelor's and master's degrees, finishing in 1980. About that time, however, he made the decision to return to the family farm and become the fourth generation operator of it. He and his wife Barbara (Logan) from Devils Lake, ND, have spent their lives and raised their two sons, Aaron and Adam, on the home place.

The Last Buffalo is the result of pondering the whats and whys of making the decision to become possibly the last generation to husband the family homestead.

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