Beau (Rising Thunder) – The white buffalo – dies and cries

BOSQUE FARMS — Two dozen people sat on blanketed hay bales, step ladders and a few random wooden stumps in the dappled shade of Monte and Lana Fastnacht’s Bosque Farms home late Saturday morning to say goodbye to a neighbor and a friend, to remember how he touched their lives for almost two decades.

The words “honored” and “special” were repeated repeatedly as friends and neighbors of Beau, a rare white buffalo, bid farewell during a May 4 blessing and memorial ceremony.

“It was Monte’s baby. They had a bond like no other,” Monte’s wife Lana said during the ceremony. “When he passed away on Monday, we sat with him as he took his last breath. It’s the only house he knows.

In the days before the buffalo died, Monte knew something was wrong: Beau refused to eat his favorite barley.

Blood tests performed by local veterinarian Donny MacDougall — who billed himself as Beau’s “doctor” — showed that the 2,000-pound buffalo was suffering from kidney failure.

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Monte Fastnacht and the rare white buffalo Beau, also known as Rising Thunder, have made regular appearances at events across the state, such as here at the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial. Beau was the only trained white buffalo in the country. He died Monday, April 29, at the home of Monte and Lana Fasnacht in Bosque Farms. The couple had been his guardians since 2007.

Born in 2006 in Colorado, Beau was originally destined for Mexico. He and his sister Buttons were sold to the Mexican government with the intention of sending them to Florida to be trained as circus animals.

In 2007, due to mad cow disease, Beau was not allowed to enter Mexico and the couple was sold to a bison producer in the National Bison Association. A few weeks later, his new owner offered Beau to the Bosque Farms couple. Along with their neighbor and investor, Dennis Royer, Monte and Lana purchased Beau, picking him up on a hot July day just outside of Oklahoma City.

After bringing him home, Monte worked persistently to bond with Beau, a slow but successful process. Just a month after bringing him to the village, Buffalo Thunder Resort contacted Beau to ask him to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony for its casino on the Pueblo of Pojoaque.

Monte said they didn’t know exactly what to expect from him, but Beau, with his “show-off” personality, performed as asked. Lana said that when they got Beau, he was “handy,” but it was Monte’s dedication that made him the only trained white buffalo in the country.

This lineup has been on display at the New Mexico State Fair, in photo shoots with rock singer Ted Nugent, and almost on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Leno’s team caught wind of Beau after the Buffalo Thunder groundbreaking and asked if Fasnachts would be willing to bring him to Hollywood. They made the trip, and Beau spent the day backstage learning how to navigate hallways filled with wires and cables, and getting on and off the stage with Monte on a special ramp built especially for the buffaloes.

Time constraints meant Beau was left out of the final show, but he was able to meet Reba McEntire and Vince Gill, who were also performing.

He also had a role in the Sean Penn film, “This Must Be The Place,” and was invited back to the Buffalo Thunder Resort for its grand opening and made numerous visits to local Valencia County schools, as well as ‘to students from Corrales and Santa. Fe.

Beau has made numerous appearances at Gallup’s inter-tribal Indian ceremonial, often walking the more than two-mile parade route and making nightly presentations in the Red Rocks State Park Arena for ceremonial dances among the bonfires.

Before his “career” took off, it became clear how special and sacred Beau was to the Indigenous community, Monte said. So, in October 2007, a naming ceremony was held for Beau so that he could receive his official Indigenous name.

On a Saturday afternoon in Santa Fe, Sara Lucero – keeper of Shawnee war chief Tecumseh’s bundle of wampum belts – led the naming ceremony. Monte said there were a number of “unusual events” that day.

Julia M. Dendinger | photo
At a blessing ceremony to mark the death of the rare white buffalo, Rising Thunder, Sara Lucero – the keeper of war chief Shawnee Tecumseh’s bundle of wampum belts – offers a song.

Two young indigenous girls participating in the ceremony fainted. Both stated that, while unconscious, they had visions of a white buffalo emerging from underground. Later in the ceremony, after Lucero had prayed for the elders who had stopped by to hear him, a large flock of crows landed on the pipe fence around the field. After praying for the rains to come and provide grass for the bison, the watering system was turned on.

That day, Beau was given the name Rising Thunder.

Lucero attended the ceremony at Bosque Farms last weekend to offer a blessing to Rising Thunder and explained why he was so special and important to many in the Native community.

“The two girls who passed out, I knew they were okay. They were only hit by his ethereal white lightning, his invisible power,” Lucero said. “When we have the vision of certain animals, especially white ones, it is very sacred. When a white animal shows itself to us, it is in a divine way.

Before meeting Rising Thunder, Lucero said she had a dream, “a vision, of a man in a stable, kneeling by a wooden cradle.” Inside the cradle was a white buffalo. I knew he was coming, that he would bring spiritual healing to the world and help us bring global healing.

While Beau was with the Fasnachts, Lucero, his family, and friends frequently visited him to pray for him during sacred and seasonal times.

At the end of the ceremony, MacDougall said something came to mind while listening to Lucero.

“Sometimes it takes me a minute to connect the dots,” he says with a laugh. “A white buffalo was born in Texas the day Beau died. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for opening a window when a door closed.

The white bison born in Texas was named Unatsi, the Cherokee word for snow. Another white calf was born in Kansas on May 24.

The white buffalo represents healing, peace and harmony among many Native Americans.

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Since 2007, Beau, a rare white buffalo, was regularly seen grazing at the Bosque Farms home of his keepers, Monte and Lana Fasnacht. A harbinger of peace and harmony for many Native Americans, and named Rising Thunder during his naming ceremony, Beau died of kidney failure on Monday, April 29.

One of Fasnacht’s neighbors, Anne Marie Werner-Smith, often stopped and said hello to Beau as he grazed in a pasture along the road.

“He was part of our community, he was our neighbor,” Werner-Smith said during the blessing ceremony. “We always felt like he was a blessing to the neighborhood when he was here.

The buffalo represents the heart, Lucero said, “the center of us and all the beautiful emotions we feel. He’s a star now.

“Lift up your eyes and you will see it. Those who needed healing were touched by his invisible power. He had the blessing of the Creator to be here and help us all.