In 1883, a well-connected young politician and writer from New York named Theodore Roosevelt

ventured west into the Dakota territory to shoot Buffalo, knowing full well of their growing

scarcity upon the American plains.

He suffered, tired, and hungry for many days before finally meeting a single bison bull,

grazing upon a hill.

Roosevelt later wrote,

As I rose above the crest of the hill, the bison held up his head and cocked his tail in

the air.

Before he could go off, I put the bullet in behind his shoulder.

The future governor of New York and the future president of the United States had killed

one of the last remaining American bison at a moment when the animal was on the brink

of extinction.

This near obliteration of a creature which has become a symbol of the United States is

explored in the new film The American Buffalo, directed by this week's guest, Ken Burns.

This is an animal that grown, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 million, uncountable numbers,

and by the end of the 1880s, middle of the 1880s, they're fewer than a thousand, and

most of them are in zoos or private collections, only a handful running wild and free.

Roosevelt himself later wrote,

Never before in all history were so many large wild animals of one species slain in so short

a space of time.

But while he would never lose his passion for hunting, Theodore Roosevelt would eventually

lead the cause in saving the buffalo, both through his actions as president and through

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