What is a white Bison

A white bison is an American bison possessing white fur, and is considered sacred or spiritually significant in multiple Native American religions. As a result, such buffalo are often visited for prayer and other religious rituals. The coats of bison in general are almost always brown and their skin tend toward dark brown or black.

Scientists have determined that White Bison can result from one of several physical conditions:

• They may be albinos, in which case they will remain unpigmented throughout their lives, and may also have hearing and vision problems. As a result, in the wild their lives would tend to be quite short.

• They may be leucistic, That is, with white fur but blue eyes instead of the pink seen in albinos.

• They may have a rare genetic condition which causes a buffalo to be born white, but to become brown within a year or two as it matures.

• They may be 'beefalo' (a bison–cattle crossbreed) and thus have inherited the white coloration from their cattle ancestry.

The Lakota Indians have a different historical take on this:

• Multiple stories talk about a time when their tribe was starving. In these stories, a beautiful woman in white came to the tribe and, over the course of four days, taught them many things, including the notion that all things in the world are connected. As she was leaving, she transformed into a white bison calf and brought a massive herd of bison to the people, saving them from starving. In many versions of the story, the woman promises to return in the future in the form of a white bison calf.

Regardless, White Bison are extremely rare; the National Bison Association has estimated that they only occur in approximately one out of every 10 million births.