Pendleton's white buffalo blankets

Central Oregon white buffalo herd featured on special Pendleton blanket

By Richard CockleThe herd is set to gain some new notoriety. Pendleton Woolen Mills 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.

"It's a unique story, it's a feel-good story in some ways," Christnacht says. "I'm hopeful we might be able to make up to 200 of the blankets" in the coming year.
And:Hait also is the one who conceived the idea last spring of having Pendleton Woolen Mills weave the blankets using the white buffalo shed hair. "My wife and kids said, 'What are you smoking?'" when he told them he was taking a bag of shed hair to Woolen Mills President C.M. "Mort" Bishop.

The blankets retail for $520 each, including shipping. The first 11 blankets are special collectibles costing $5,250 each and have the name of one of the 11 white buffalo on them. Four have sold. The blanket sales help underwrite the land rental and hay purchases by the nonprofit Sacred World Peace Alliance directed by Hart-Button that operates the white buffalo sanctuary.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Pendleton Spreads Native Designs and A Century of Pendleton Blankets.

Below:  "Rare white buffalo commune on a sanctuary in central Oregon. When a bison is confined, the corrals must be both high and stout. A buffalo that decides to leave can jump over an ordinary 6-foot-high fence or crash through it." (Richard Cockle/The Oregonian)