The American Buffalo takes viewers on a journey through more than 10,000 years of North American history and across some of the continent's most iconic landscapes, tracing the animal's evolution, its significance to the Indigenous people and the landscape of the Great Plains, its near extinction, and the efforts to bring the magnificent mammals back from the brink.

For thousands of generations, buffalo (species bison bison) have evolved alongside Indigenous people who relied on them for food and shelter and, in exchange for killing them, revered the animal. The stories of Native people anchor the series, including the Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne of the Southern Plains; the Lakota, Salish, Kootenai, Mandan-Hidatsa, and Blackfeet from the Northern Plains; and others.

Ken Burns recounts the tragic collision of two opposing views of the natural world—and the unforgettable characters who pointed the nation in a different direction.