Platt Middle incident
Sep. 15—Ralphie, the mascot of the University of Colorado football team, is technically not actually a buffalo, she's a bison. But, in a way, the mascot is both.
In preparation for the face off between the CU Buffs and Colorado State University Rams on Saturday after a three-year hiatus, fans are reviving the rivalry between the mascots. Both have deep historical ties to the American West, but Ralphie's connection is a bit more complicated.
Brooke Neely, a research associate with CU Boulder's Center of the American West, said Ralphie is actually a North American bison. There are technically no buffalo in the United States, yet many people commonly call bison buffalo.
A buffalo is actually a different animal that inhabits parts of Africa and Asia, Neely said. The word was misapplied and ingrained into American culture centuries ago.
Neely said it was French trappers, likely in the 17th century, who referred to bison as boeuf because they resembled the buffalo they knew from Africa and Asia. This term was then adapted and widely used in English to this day.
Ralphie is called a buffalo because the term was common in the 1930s when CU adopted the buffalo as a mascot. The CU Boulder student newspaper suggested the buffalo as the mascot in 1934, and in 1966, the university adopted its first live bison as a mascot, which started the Ralphie tradition.
So, can you refer to Ralphie and other bison as buffalo? The short answer is yes.
"The term buffalo has been so widely used that it's become accepted as an informal alternative to the technically correct term bison," Neely said.
CAM the Ram, CSU's mascot, is a Rambouillet ram which is native to France. According to CSU Public Information Officer Nik Olsen, CSU began a Rambouillet breeding program in the early 1970s and reinvested in the program in 2017.
While the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep is featured prominently on the CSU campus in statuary and imagery, Olsen said, it is not a good fit for a live mascot.
"The bighorn sheep is not a domesticated animal like a Rambouillet or American bison. At 350 pounds with 30-pound curved horns and the ability to run at speeds around 40 mph, it would be unethical and unsafe to maintain a Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep as a university mascot," Olsen said.
Bison are the largest mammal in North America, can live as old as 20 and can run up to 35 mph. A male bison can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and stand 6 feet tall. Because of the male's size and temperament, Ralphie has always been a female.
With bison like Ralphie, Neely said, Americans have had a long history of fascination and connection.
Many Native nations have long-standing connections to bison and have been involved in restoring bison since hide hunters nearly decimated them in the late 19th century, Neely said. Today, many tribes are cultivating their own herds to revitalize this cultural connection.
"As the United States invaded western North America, they saw bison as both a wild creature to celebrate and an animal that needed to be tamed in order to colonize the region," Neely said.
"They also almost hunted bison to extinction. Over time, bison have become tied to American identity and now CU Boulder's identity. They remain an enduring symbol of the western United States."
