Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Indian Culpability in Bison Demise

Yep, and post-Civil War the telegraph and the railroad nailed down the lid, allowing wider communication of where the nesting colonies were, faster arrival at those locations and more efficient shipping of pigeons and squabs to markets.

A sad thing is Central Texas might have been the last wintering ground of the dwindling flocks, big roosts reported here well into the 1880’s.

Didn’t read the long OP post.

Any mention of the huge cliff kill sites?

Need a couple of head of buffs for the tribe to eat.

Let’s run a herd off the cliff, leave the rest to spoil.

Of course. Primitive peoples are less destructive of nature only because they lack the ability to exploit it to a higher level. Always seemed obvious to me. All crap about being one with nature is liberal BS. Always has been.

Well, I agree to a point. Having been a farm boy you can't help but feel a closeness and responsibility to the land and the animals you care for. Its something sadly lacking in people raised on concrete and asphalt.

And yes, the BS about Indians wasting nothing is pure BS as well. Hell, my depression ancestors and before revered every single bit of food passed in front of them and they damn well made sure the oink was the only thing that got away at hog killing time. What pitiful few scraps we had were given to the stock for food.

And here's the bottom line. Indians had a use for every part of the buffalo but they didn't use it every time they killed one!

Rednecks can thank the injuns for wiping out the buffler.....................lest we be smashing' into them with our p'ups.

My niece runs the buffler ride at Yellowstone.

Fertilizer

Many do no realize it, but due to the deerskin trade beginning in the late17th early 18th century, the same thing almost happened to the whitetail deer.

Always use as an example for native waste of resources the Gilbert site, Rains Co. Texas. Site full of French Trade goods from Natchitoches. When archaeologists began finding fully articulated whitetail skeletal remains there, piled one on top of the other. They knew they were only really utilizing the hides.

As a sidenote many southeastern tribal members in the early 19th century had never even seen a deer until they got to Oklahoma. (One of the reasons Pushmataha was ready to move there from Mississippi ! He hunted butfalo in what is now SE Oklahoma as a young man).

Every discussion here turns into an all or nothing mess.

No one said that whilte man wasn't a contributing factor to the decline of the American Bison.
What is being stated is that the Red man has blood on his hands as well, as opposed to the long standing notion that Indians were environmentalists that lived in harmony with nature.

Modern Natives and their "reverence" for nature...

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/article/eight-charged-point-hope-caribou-slaughter/2009/03/17/

You land stealing, treaty breaking, smallpox blanket giving, Trail of Tears marching looters rapers and pillagers feel better about yourselves yet?


Maybe bring up Casinos and buffalo jumps again....

Good Morning Salmonella,,

Just a little levity.

I have read this before . For sure interesting. Have read some of your references and others..

I find this info on the Campfire and comments to be F U C K I N G hilarious,

I refuse to take this forum in any serious manner.

Now how about a review of "The Bloody Bozeman" by Dorthy Johnson.

Best,

Chuck

I’ve read about eastern Indians having hunting contests where the braves would go out and kill whatever they could. Tecumseh won one with something like 50 or 75 deer in two or three days.

History is never as cut and dried as we'd like it to be. We have a tendency to look at it through our own eyes instead of those that actually lived it.

The only thing lacking on the Campfire is an open bar.....................

I was first made aware of this from Dr. Charles Kay at Utah State University. Interesting stuff. He's done deep dives into the Lewis and Clark journals as well as archeological information to support his hypothesis. Once exposed to it, it really does make sense to me.

Partly - it was also heavily used in refining sugar

in addition to other causes listed above, the big drives of Texas cattle into the Musselshell country introduced tick disease into the last million or so of the northern herd, wiping them out in a mere two years or so Hide shipment records of the NP from Miles City, etc did not support the hide hunting factor in this time frame accounts of thousands of dead untouched bison littering the plains also support the disease factor

i suspect cattle diseases to which bison had no immunity may also have been a cause throughout the bisons range, not just in the north, tho this is not documented.

a perfect storm, the poor bastids!

Where did all the bones come from ?

Weather killed many many animals .The painting by C M Russel, The Last of The 5000 is good place to start.

It is set in Montana, and the winter of 1886-1887. The outfit (ranch) was the DHS . they lost in excess of 5000 head in the Judith Basin area which is a milder winter area

than most of the rest of eastern MT. Do you suppose that weather killed any wild life?

There is a trail down into the Missouri river known as the Bone Trail . People in the area picked up bones and hauled them to the river to steamboats, and later to the

railroad to sell. It would not take to long to make a very big pile.

as i said in above Disease killed off the northern herd. bone pickers gathered the bones for several years sfter snd shipped them to Chicago for sugar refining and fertilizer

From NP railroad shipping records

Check out how the Chehalis Indians decimate the salmon runs up the Chehalis river every year, interlocking gill nets. They are hard core on wildlife of any kind.

I feel OK.