BIrdwatcher, I’d heard that the buffalo carried brucellosis and they were killed off so as not to infect the cattle.
Ya, a quick Google stated that brucellosis weren’t ID’d here until 1910, and first found in Yellowstone buffalo and elk in 1917.
But there’s a whole panoply of communicable cattle diseases. I’m pretty sure accounts of mass die-offs of buffalo to disease have been referenced here on the ‘Fire.
I’ve read accounts of livestock along the Santa Fe Trial transmitting diseases to buffalo. It weren’t just buffalo, very few, if any present day dogs in the Lower 48 carry traces of original Indian dogs. The feral Carolina Yellow Dogs of the Southeast turned out to be of Euro dog ancestry. We have photos of the Tahltan Bear Dog of the Pacific NW but the last known examples died from distemper.
Applied to people too of course, the ‘49ers brung cholera with them across the Plains of their way West, wiped out an estimated 10,000 Comanches in the winter of 49/50. Half the tribe as it was at that time.
