Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What killed the buffalo?

No. I've heard of no professional Bison hunter who employed the 45-70 as a primary arm. The 45-70 actually appears to have run a distant fourth to the 50-70, 44-77, and 50-90 from what I can tell through studying the matter. But it was there by the mid 70's and it was killing Bison contrary to JMR40's misinformation

As to what caused the extinction I cannot say but I do think it was a culmination of a lot of things. I have read that it took at least 25 Buffalos for one indian family each year not counting what they killed for food. They made a lot of stuff including their housing and clothing from the hides. Other than drying the meat for jerky there wasn't any way of preserving it much. Drought, fencing off the prarie, market hunting, disease and other weather conditions like winter storms and such must have played hob with them.

Actually there are written accounts, three are referred to here, there are others….

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190052818300087

Also, Charles Goodnight’s comments included referring to the decimation of his by then Hereford and other improved breeds of cattle by the mere passing of herds of driven longhorn cattle are illuminating.

The Comanche and Kiowa first got into the cattle driving/stealing business in a big way in the 1860’s, refer to my previous comment about Kit Carson finding herds of Texas cattle in association with Comanche and Kiowa camps in the 1860’s. Those cattle also woulda carried diseases.

Another thing about epidemics both human and animal was if they happened to occur unseen and written about by literate people, they often went unrecorded. Many of our human hunters could and did write down what they had done, microbes didn’t.

673;
Good morning my friend, I hope this middle Sunday in the last month of a bit of a turbulent year finds you all well. '

Thanks for your contributions to the thread, I know you're a serious student of our western history from our conversations on that topic.

Regarding the population estimates of the bison herd, I've read some theories that as the overall plains FN tribes numbers went down from disease starting with their initial contact with Europeans that the bison herd numbers increased to a point where the habitat wouldn't support that number in the long term.

While I can't recall what evidence they backed it up with, it might have some merit.

On the subject of your ancestors and how many buffalo they took out, when we read of how many tons of pemmican they'd sell to the HBC and Northwest Company annually, it sort of staggers the imagination as to how many would be needed.

You mentioned the bone picking and of course that's the original name for Regina - Cree for "Where bones are piled" if I got the translation kinda/sorta understood.

Lastly in the "for whatever it's worth" file, both my late Father who was born in 1920 and my late Father in Law who was born in 1912 talked about having buffalo robes in the house and for sure in the horse drawn sleighs they'd use in prairie winters.

As well, the RCMP used to issue buffalo coats for winter use into the 1960's.

Those hides had to come from someplace and I can't find anywhere which indicates there were buffalo/bison ranching operations growing enough animals to supply the robes and hides for the prairie folks and RCMP Constable's coats in the '30's.

So then the question I have is where'd those hides and robes come from?

Were there warehouses full of them back east from the hunting days of the 1880's?

Lastly your skull and bone story rings true with stories that I've heard from many of the older prairie generation farmers including my late Father and Father in Law who talked about finding them into the '50's.

All the best to you all this Sunday and Merry Christmas.

Dwayne

I never said it didn't happen, I said I never read or saw any documented in the Fur traders journals, a primary source, not some guys musings.

I also said if it did happen, then it was perhaps in the south as Hastings was eluding too, but the diseased Buffalo were killed before any disease was evident on the Northern plains, killed either by said disease, or more likely hunters.

Fur traders were more literate than many people today, and their job was to document everything, which they did. Are there any documented reports of Indians that saw many Buffalo dead and dying from disease?

Injuns and the horse.

Indian Culpability in Bison Demise

https://www.thewildlifenews.com/202...20had%20a,bison%20in%20a%20single%20day.

An interesting link mentioning Comanches running off more than 4,000 head of Texas cattle in a single week and one cattleman’s counter strike in 1873.

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2002&context=nmhr

That same year a demonstration corral of then new-fangled barbed wire would be set up in downtown San Antonio, said wire heralding the end of an era.

I’m looking for a reference that mentioned Comanches trading 30,000 head of Texas cattle in New Mexico that same year.

This expertise in cattle perhaps explaining why Quanah Parker and the last of the radical traditionalist fringe group could transform so easily into ranching after the shooting stopped.

Are you saying Jesus killed them off?

I believe buffalo bones are generally absent from Indian sites in the East prior to that massive epidemics of the 1600’s, indicating the Indians themselves had previously hunted then out of those areas, buffalos then extending their range east in the absence of humans.

This thread is good.

Possibly waaay back into millennium for parts of Tenn and Kentucky notwithstanding small pocket populations clinging on.
I have long hypothesized this with the abrupt cut off of Archaic blades, darts and tools for dismantling big kills. These types of tools grow absent about the cut off of 6000 years. Sites were I hunted hold almost nothing from Woodland and Mississippian Cultures.
All ‘big hunter’ type sites with large order springs, and small upland rivers.
One place we hunt has what appears to me be an ancient eastern buffalo fording. The only pocket in to high river banks. Astounding amounts of artifacts and debitage here. As if an ambush point.
Elk in the equation too but these sites are in what is considered The Barrens. Flat, areas, Kentucky prairie type biomes with karst areas and dolines that would make suitable wallows and additional ambush spots.

Would really like to get maybe Cûntz or VomitGuy to lend something to this conversation.

Ringman: I am not sure of the correct reason so many millions of them perished, but I am happy "some" American Bison are left.
100,000,000 "Buffalo" would be tough to "get along with" in todays America - what with them blocking freeways, wrecking wheat fields and trampling children in schoolyards etc etc etc.
I like Buffalo's and have eaten a fair amount of Buffalo meat - can't seem to get drawn for my own Buffalo tag here in Montana though.
Long live the Buffalo.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I saw a documentary that said they were reliant on chestnut trees, and some disease killed off the trees.

Absolutely not. The issue was done before Brucellosis came to the US.

In far northern central and even east central Minnesota when digging deeper to improve the road system they are finding extremely large bison skulls down deep in the boggish ground. How long ago was that?

In southeastern Montana along the little Missouri, powder, tongue, rosebud, big and little horn rivers and many tributary creeks buffalo skulls and bones are a common find, not really noted anymore.
Many I’m sure did succomb to flooding events. Maybe like blue tongue there diseases that clobbered certain areas periodically the way mother nature does.

I have a complete spine I found coming out of a bank deep down in a cut. Skull is probably in there somewhere yet. U of M did an analysis for age and told me 17,000 years give or take a few hundred.
Neat stuff.

Osky

Very interesting reading, thank you

10Glocks: Thanks for that VERY interesting and informative articles link.
Thanks again.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

This is an exellent thesis, and speaks to and of some of the Fur traders I was/am referring to. There are Communities up here that were founded by Buffalo hunting families and the people are still there today, like where I am from in the Qu'appelle valley in Saskatchewan. Virtually all of the people there are remnants of historic Buffalo hunting families, unless they came there recently.

However, I don't know anything about hunting south of Montana and N.Dakota, and am surprised Buffalo were that far east and South, according to the map provided some posts back. There are historic Buffalo hunting Communities in the two states I mentioned.

On the Pemmican... people who received land grants etc , while clearing land for farming, lots of people were finding Pemmican caches hidden that were there for 60-80 years.

Prime beef tastes better.

673;
Good afternoon, I trust the day goes well up there for you all.

In the early '80's I worked in a small 3 man cabinet shop owned by a Metis chap with the last name Barrett.

He'd grown up just east of your people in Qu'Appelle, I want to say maybe Wapella area?

Anyways he was maybe 15 years older than me but perhaps a bit less and told of finding a pemmican cache in a tree stump as a kid.

When I asked him what it tasted like, he replied, "Pretty much like all other pemmican I tried, which was terrible!"

I believe it was from him that I was told that the Metis didn't add berries to the pemmican they made for themselves as it didn't last as long with berries added, but the stuff sold to the fur trading companies could go either way.

That might be my remembering something mixed up too however, it was a long, long time ago that that conversation took place.

All the best.

Dwayne