Central Oregon white buffalo herd featured on special Pendleton blanket

Spirit Thunder stands beside a corral of thick, peeled lodgepoles, a shaggy, 1,500-pound snowball with horns and hooves.

"He’s just a big, dumb kid," caretaker Cynthia Hart-Button says fondly of the rare 6-year-old white buffalo bull. "He’s kind of like, ‘Duh, have you got a treat for me today?’"

Among buffalo — more properly known as American bison — white ones are so unusual that some Native American tribes consider them sacred. No one seems to know how many exist, but ranching experts estimate fewer than 50 live in the United States.

And 11 of them are part of a central Oregon herd of 14 buffalo. They roam 288 acres of isolated juniper forest east of Bend and are believed to be the world’s largest collection of white buffalo.

The herd is set to gain some new notoriety. Pendleton Woolen Mills http://www.pendleton-usa.com/custserv/custserv.jsp?pageName=Heritage is making Navajo-style "medicine blankets" using wool and blended white buffalo hair that the bison have shed. The blankets are new this season and the mill tentatively plans a second, larger run for 2011, says spokesman Robert Christnacht.

Richard Cockle, The Oregonian

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