About 60 people gathered on a recent chilly Saturday at Lords Park Zoo in Elgin to say goodbye to Dakota, the 18-year-old buffalo who called the little zoo home before he died in December. "It won't be all that fun without him," said Tobias Little, 9, who lives just blocks from the zoo and spent many days visiting and feeding Dakota. The boy described the 2,500-pound animal as "fluffy and friendly" and said he "looked like the boss there."

"Something's going to be missing," Tobias said. Joseph "Standing Bear" Schranz, an elder of the White Earth Ojibwe tribe and president and founder of Midwest Save Our Ancestors Remains and Resources Indigenous Networking Group Foundation, or SOARRING, led the brief ceremony, which began with a "smudging" with incense and was intended, he said, as "a remembrance of what Dakota meant to so many people." The ceremony also was a blessing of the two remaining healthy buffaloes, Cahoya, 22, and Pokey, 19.

Schranz noted that, in pre-settler days, there were millions upon millions of buffaloes roaming North America. Today, an estimated 200,000 live on preserves and ranches. The typical buffalo lifespan is 15 to 20 years, but because Dakota was born with a thyroid imbalance, he was unable to grow in his winter coat. It was especially difficult for him to battle December's extreme cold, and pneumonia set in, city officials said.

Dakota, voted in a local newspaper the area's "2009 Face of the Year," lived at the zoo with Cahoya and Pokey since 1991 and fathered about 20 buffaloes with the two females, city officials estimate. Four of Dakota's calves live at the Midwest SOARRING ranch, a Native American reservation in downstate LeRoy.

The zoo has been at the park since 1895 and began with two donated black bears. Over the years the zoo has housed lions, monkeys and a snake; today, elk, deer and the buffaloes live there year-round.

Zoo supporters hope the ceremony raises awareness of the facility's financial needs. The Friends of Lords Park Zoo, a grass-roots community group, was established last summer to raise money toward zoo operations and improvements. Laurie Faith Gibson-Aiello, who helped establish the group, said it raised $4,700 last year and hopes to get younger buffaloes into the herd and shore up the zoo's fencing.