How to Make a Buffalo Chip Fire
Make a buffalo chip fire and you’ll have a better appreciation for how difficult life on the Oregon Trail was.
If you’ve browsed this site for very long at all, you’ve probably realized that I think living history is a great way to learn it. Reading that mountain men slept in buffalo robes is one thing, but actually spending the night in one is something totally different. Living historical experiences gives you insight into all of the small details books leave out. In the buffalo robe example, you don’t learn how heavy they are, how comfortable the thick hair is, or how you breath the smell of smoked hide all night. It’s not that living history is the only way to learn about history, it’s just that it adds much more depth to your understanding. If you’ve ever taken the time to make a buffalo chip fire you no doubt understand this concept.
Prior to the flood of pioneers that traveled the Oregon Trail, Native Americans of the Great Plains had been using buffalo chip fires for centuries. The fact is, the landscapes we see on the prairie today has been greatly changed by the presence of man. One of the biggest changes is that today there are many, many, many more trees that naturally would have been found. A combination of lack of rainfall, uninhibited grassfires, and huge herds of trampling buffalo were likely the chief reasons for the lack of timber in the area. That being the case, Native people still attempted to live in the desolate prairie region. In order to produce fire, they had to turn to what the prairie offered, and that was buffalo chips.
In case you are unaware, buffalo chips are what come out of the south end of a north-bound buffalo. Due to the enormous buffalo population these chips would have been found nearly everywhere on the plains. Native people gathered them and these smokey fires provided them with the life giving fire mankind has always appreciated.
On the Oregon Trail, pioneers had to emulate the Native people as they passed over the plains. It was normally the job of women to take care of the cooking chores and most often they were the ones who had to make a buffalo chip fire every morning and every evening. Fires like these aren’t like regular wood fires you might be used to. In order to show what they would have been like, and to add depth to my book “Tyrant’s Road” I put together this video showing how to make a buffalo chip fire.
As mentioned above, living history can give you a much better understanding of a time period. It’s one thing to know that women used buffalo chips to make fire, and it is something completely different to battle the smoke like they did. In the video I also discussed how these fires would have been ideal for use in the dry grasslands of the Great Plains. Grass fires can be a scary thing and making a fire from buffalo chips would have diminished the chances of your fire getting out of control.
If you enjoy learning about the frontier, I hope you take the time to do some living history activities. They are a great way to learn about history, and generally promote skills of self-reliance and frontier living. if nothing else, living history can help you appreciate all of the things we take for granted in our high-tech modern world.
