Chuck Lanehart
Editor’s Note: Jack Becker is the editor of Caprock Chronicles and is a librarian at Texas Tech University Libraries. He can be reached at jack.becker@ttu.edu. Today’s article about Snyder’s legendary white buffalo is by frequent contributor Chuck Lanehart, Lubbock attorney and historian.
Before hide hunters began to penetrate the Great Plains in 1871, 60 million bison – known as buffalo – were thought to occupy the American West. Within a period of 18 years, just 500 bison survived perhaps the greatest human slaughter of animals in history. One such kill – that of a white buffalo in Scurry County – is legendary.