Where the Buffalo Roam-Not!

At a mass meeting in Webster Hall in May of 1908, students contemplated cheering for the Dartmouth Buffalo. The proposal for the new "official animal" (with illustrative cartoons projected on a screen) came from Ernest H. Baynes, deliverer of several popular College "smoke talks." Baynes figured if Princeton had a tiger.and Yale had a bulldog, Dartmouth should go with the buffalo. Why the buffalo? Baynes was secretary of the American Bison Society and a natural history lecturer with New Hampshire's Corbin Park Game Preserve, a buffalo sanctuary that had begun in the even more unlikely location of Van Cortlandt Pai k in N ew \ ork City. But the mascot idea was only part of Baynes s larger plan—he hoped to preserve a few more buffalo from extinction by persuading students to raise $4,500 to buy a "Dartmouth College Herd." As part of his pitch Baynes appeared at the fraternity circus during Prom Week on the football field driving a cart pulled by a pair of buffalo. Students and alumni, however, didn't stampede with open wallets. The coincident fundraising for the new Alumni Gym killed Baynes's idea, leaving Dartmouth without a mascot.

Could Dartmouth buffalo the rest of the Ivies?