Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) coerced, fooled, crushed, thus excl. I’ll be buffaloed!

1889		News-Courant (Cottonwood Falls, KS) 12 Sept. 2/1: ‘Never heerd how they shanghaied Jack Frazier up in Coloraydo? Wa’l I’ll be buffaloed!’.
1891		C.F. Lummis A New Mexico David 84: Cain’t yo’ never mind yo’r own self ’thout pitchin’ onto somebody smaller’n yo’ be? The boy’s a good boy, ’n’ he shain’t be buffalered while I’m ’round.
1907		D. Runyon ‘Fat Fallon’ in From First to Last (1954) 30: He’d been posing as a fighter [...] and he had most of us buffaloed.
1914		M. Glass Potash and Perlmutter 76: A feller what can’t pay his own laundry bill, Mawruss, has no trouble getting a thousand dollars because the second vice-president is buffaloed already by the stovepipe hat, a Prince Albert coat and a four-carat stone with a flaw in it.
1914		Van Loan ‘The Indian Sign’ in Collier’s 1 Aug. in Van Loan (2004) 450: I’ll never take any more lip from that old stiff [...] I’ve got him buffaloed.
1919		H.C. Witwer Smile A Minute 158: I could yell out loud with joy, only that smoke-room steward [...] has got me buffaloed.
1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 167: Doctor, don’t be buffaloed by the unenterprising.
1928		J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 32: She was afraid to leave him. He had her ‘buffaloed’.
1933		Nicholson & Robinson Sailor Beware! II ii: She’s got him buffaloed!
1934		O. Strange Sudden 97: Your big brother may have this town buffaloed, but I’m not scared of him.
1943		W. Guthrie Bound for Glory (1969) 227: The white puts out a long arm [...] The dark one is buffaloed.
1948		Range Riders Western May 58/1: That had me buffaloed for a while [DA].
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 45: A jail sentence, head shaven, fed on slumgullion, mustered in the mud, buffaloed and bossed.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1968		G. Cuomo Among Thieves 286: You could see that even Orninski – well, he was just buffaloed.
1971		J.D. Horan Blue Messiah 158: He must have those old guys buffaloed.
1987		J. Ciardi Good Words 53: Buffalo v. Also to be buffaloed; he has me buffaloed, I’ve got him buffaloed.
1996		T. Wolff ‘Smorgasbord’ in The Night in Question 152: Most of them kept cars a few blocks from the campus, though that was completely against the rules. [...] The headmaster was completely buffaloed.