My thoughts exactly...
So weary of the narrative of Indians being the holy savior and mighty steward of nature and wildlife while whitey is evil.

A long but good read.

Indian Culpability in Bison Demise.


Many authors today suggest that Indigenous people somehow behaved differently from other humans, particularly western culture that now dominates the globe in their relationship and exploitation of natural lands. The general theme is that while the human influence pre-European contact was significant, human exploitation was tempered by cultural values and techniques that did not disrupt ecosystem processes. Some suggest that conservation lands would be better managed with more positive outcomes for ecological integrity if Indigenous peoples were given oversight and control of these lands.

The idea that somehow either through cultural values or even “genetics” Indigenous people are more likely to protect and enhance biodiversity and other conservation values is widespread. But the other possibility that I think provides more explanation is that across the globe, wherever there was a low human population and limited technology, people “appeared” to live in “balance” more or less with natural landscapes. This is just as true of Celtic people in the British Isles, Mongols in the Asian Steppes, Bedouin people in the Middle East, or Africans in the Congo.

What is common in all these instances is low population and low technology. Change these factors, and humans everywhere, no matter their religion, race, or cultural identity, frequently overexploit the land. With modern technology, medicine, food availability and other factors, including dependency on the global economy, almost all indigenous people are freed from these prior constraints. Indeed, have been freed for several centuries in most places.

Such ideas are frequently guilty of the False Cause Fallacy. Correlation is not Causation. The False Cause Fallacy occurs when we wrongly assume that one thing leads to something else because we’ve noticed what appears to be a relationship between them.

The fallacy is saying in times past because there were more wolves or more bison or whatever when Indigenous people occupied a specific location, it was due to the people’s cultural values.

Let us examine, for instance, the common assertion that tribal people somehow sustainably utilized wildlife. It is widely assumed that white commercial hunters caused the demise of the West’s bison herds. This is such a widespread assertion that most people take it as fact, but particularly by Native American advocates.

Tribal people in North America were like humans throughout the world and demonstrated intelligence and self-interest and this often meant overexploitation of resources–when they had the capability to do so. However, with limited technology and low population, their influence on wildlife populations was limited, except in localized areas or with animals that had no previous experience with human predators (as occurred with North American Pleistocene extinction of large mammals like mammoths).

Nevertheless, the archeological record is full of examples of Indian overkill or ecological destruction. It is through, for instance, that clearcutting of tropical forests in Central America led to droughts that resulted in the decline of the Mayan culture. The demise of the Mound Culture in Wisconsin is thought to have been caused by the regional decline of whitetail deer, whether due to overhunting or climatic conditions is uncertain. But it is clear that human hunting played a role (Theler
and Boszhardt 2003 Pre-European Archaeology of the Lower Wisconsin River).

There is no doubt that commercial hide hunting by white hunters provided the final nail in the coffin of wild bison. But a careful reading of early historical accounts of the western plains indicates that bison numbers were already in steep decline before significant commercial buffalo hunting began in the 1870s.

What changed the relationship between tribal people and bison was new technology, in this instance, the acquisition of the horse.

Once tribal people acquired the horse, and in particular, the rifle, bison numbers began to decline. Most tribes on the Great Plains had horses by the 1750s, and the typical “plains Indian” nomadic bison hunting lifestyle was in full swing by 1800.

Not only did the horse provide more mobility, and hence the ability to move frequently to exploit bison herds, leaving fewer “refuge areas,” but it also permitted the acquisition of more possessions, including larger teepees (utilizing more hides) since pack horses could move them.

Before the horse, bison hunting was essentially a “hit or miss” proposition. Occasionally a herd could be led over a cliff killing hundreds of animals. Still, the right circumstances, including an available cliff site and a nearby herd that one could stampede over it, were relatively rare. Hunters could sometimes kill large numbers of bison mired in deep snow by approaching on snowshoes, but again the circumstances were relatively rare. All of these were like winning the lottery; as anyone buying a lottery ticket today knows, most never result in a win.

Thus, what may appear to be a conservation ethic is more a consequence of low population and low technology, and limited hunting efficiency.



The introduction of the horse into Indian culture revolutionized bison hunting as well as warfare. Photo George Wuerthner

One cannot overstate how the horse revolutionized Plains Indian culture. The horse was, in a sense, a new revolutionary technology. Horses were stolen from the Spanish or acquired from wild herds rapidly spread across the plains. By the 1750s, most northern plains tribes had acquired the horse.

Not only did it increase hunting efficiency, but it also led to the development of the “warrior” culture. Acquisition of horses and scalps became the main occupation of male tribal members.

Tribes in the northern plains were warrior societies. If you were a male, your entire occupation and goal in life was to be a great and respected warrior.

For instance, the Cheyenne, like most nomadic Plains tribes, were extremely war-like. As described in Duane Schultz’s book Month of the Freezing Moon, “the Cheyenne boys were taught to fight and die gloriously, and their goal was to become the bravest warrior… To the Cheyenne, anyone who was not of their own tribe was an enemy….”

In his book “The Fighting Cheyenne,” George Bird Grinnell characterized the tribe as “A Fighting and a fearless people, the tribe was almost constantly at war with its neighbors….”

Father De Smet made a similar observation when he noted that “the Sioux are five or six thousand warriors in number, mounted for the most part on swift horses. War is to them not only a business or a pastime but the occupation par excellence of their lives.” He goes on to say, “No Indian could ever occupy a place in the councils of his tribe until he had met the enemy on the field of battle. He who reckons the most scalps is the most highly considered among his people.”

Edwin Denig, in his book Five Tribes of The Upper Missouri, noted that the Blackfeet and Crow were in “continual war” over horses and that scarcely a week passes, but large numbers are swept off by war parties of on both sides. In these depredations, men are killed, which calls for revenge by the losing tribe.

Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow said in his biography that his tribe always fought the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe. Regarding the U.S. Army’s battles with these tribes, Plenty Coups admitted

“The complete destruction of our old enemies would please us.”

Tribal warfare was so common that it created a severe shortage of warriors. Men suffered such a high mortality to the point that some tribes sought to capture women from other tribes as “breeding stock” to repopulate their numbers. In particular, warriors who were essential to the tribe’s survival and women who did the bulk of the work like tanning hides.

Denig says: “One excellent trait in their character (referring to the Crow tribe) is that, if possible, in battle they take the women and children prisoners, instead of dashing their brains out as the rest of the tribes do.” He says: “Therefore in thus raising the children of their enemies, they in a manner supply the loss of a portion killed in war.”

Many other tribes also frequently captured women for breeding purposes or slaves from the Comanches in the southern plains to the Mandan in the northern plains. Sacajawea, who helped guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition, had been one such captive.

Indeed, some authorities suggest that other Indians killed far more Indians in intertribal warfare than the U.S. Army.

The horse intensified territorial conflicts. The Blackfeet moved into southern Alberta in the late 1700s and probably into northern Montana about the same time. However, there were already people living in Montana at that time, including the Flathead, Kutenai’s, and Pend ‘d Oreilles. The latter were pushed back across the Continental Divide by the Blackfeet. The Blackfeet war parties also forced the Shoshone southward out of Montana.

Similarly, the Crow tribe originated, as best as we can tell, in Ohio. They moved into the Missouri River country of the Dakotas as farmers. Eventually, after obtaining horses, the Crow became more mobile and adopted a plains bison hunting culture. They separated from the Hidatsa in 1776 and moved up the lower Yellowstone River into Montana. In doing so, they pushed the Shoshone south and westward.

The same is true for the Northern Cheyenne. They originated in the Upper Midwest, moved West, and adopted a mobile bison hunting lifestyle after acquiring the horse. They moved to the South Platte River area and eventually moved back northward due to conflicts with the Comanches

Bison propelled this transformation in Plains Indian culture; obviously, bison were the commissary of these warring tribes, but just as significant was the sale and trade value of bison hides they used to procure trade goods.

Tribes even traded bison hides among themselves. The Crow were known to trade bison hides with the Bannock for horses.

In his book American Bison Rewilding an Icon, James Bailey provides an excellent compilation of bison distribution in the Rocky Mountain mountains. Several of his conclusions are essential here. First, Indian predation had a significant influence on the distribution of bison. Many areas where bison were observed in one year might have few, if any, in subsequent years, in part due to the influence of Indian hunts.

He also documents many examples of Indians killing vast numbers of bison in a single day. The prevailing attitude of tribes was that the occurrence or absence of bison had little to do with hunting pressure but was a consequence of the supernatural divine intervention resulting from the proper prayers, dances, and other appeals to deities.

The idea that Indians “used” all parts of the bison and didn’t “waste” wildlife is another myth. There are plenty of documented instances of tribes killing bison merely for their tongues and leaving behind hundreds and sometimes thousands of dead animals. How many bison were killed annually in this manner is unknown; however, it was common to take only the best parts of a bison if one anticipated encountering more bison in a few days.

It is a lot of work to cut up a bison and transport it in its entirely, and unless you were starving or anticipated a shortage, it was just easier to kill a fresh animal when you needed it. And that was a common practice among Indians as it was among the few whites that roamed the plains in those days to take the best and leave the rest.

It is easy for people today to condemn such wasteful or, in many cases, try to make up excuses for it, but one cannot use today’s cultural values when viewing the past. If bison were abundant, and you believed that the herds were infinite, there was no reason to “conserve” them.



The Upper Missouri River near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota. Photo George Wuerthner

Francis Antonie Larocque, a French-Canadian trader, traveled to the Upper Missouri River in 1805 to initiate a trade with tribes located there. This was the same year that Lewis and Clark traveled up the Missouri and spent the winter of 1805 at the Mandan villages in North Dakota. Larocque noted in his journal that: “They (the tribes) live upon buffalo and deer, very few of them eat bears or beavers flesh, but when compelled by hunger: they eat no fish. They are most improvident with regards of provisions. It is amazing what number of buffalos or other quadrupeds they destroy—yet 2-3 days after a very successful hunt, the beef is gone. When hunting they take but the fattest part of an animal and leave the remainder.”

Alexander Ross, a fur trader who accompanied a bison hunt by Metis in Manitoba, reported they killed twenty-five hundred buffaloes to produce three hundred and seventy-five bags of pemmican and two hundred and forty bales of dried meat. According to Ross, seven hundred and fifty bison would have been sufficient to produce this amount of food. Still, he goes on to say, “the great characteristic of all western hunts of buffalo, elk or antelope, was waste.”

In his book The Ecological Indian, Shepard Krech quotes Trader Charles McKenzie, who lived among the plains Indians in 1804 who noted that Gros Ventre Indians he traveled with killed “whole herds” only for their tongues.

Similarly, Alexander Henry in 1809 noted that the Blackfeet left most of the bulls they had killed intact and reported that they took “only the best parts” of meat.”

And Paul Kane, another visitor to the Great Plains, remarked that the Indians “destroy innumerable buffaloes,” and he speculated that only “one in twenty is used in any way by the Indians” while “thousands are left to rot where they fall.”

(Of course, white trappers and other travelers in bison territory often did the same practices like killing a bison and only taking the prime cuts).

As early as 1800, traders along the Missouri River reported that local bison herds were depleted by native hunting. And here is where you must pay attention to dates—sometimes, most people ignore or simply don’t appreciate the significance.



The famous mountain man fur trapper era focused primarily on beaver pelts. Bison were largely ignored. Photo George Wuerthner

While a few fur traders had penetrated the Great Plains before the 1800s, the Lewis and Clark explorations between 1804-06 provided a glimpse of the bison hunting culture and the abundance of beaver. Their journals spurred on the era of the mountain man fur trapper who concentrated on beaver trapping. The mountain man was in his heyday between 1820 and 1840s. Estimates suggest that at their height, no more than 1000 white trappers were spread across the entire plains and the Rocky Mountains from what is now Mexico to Canada. And the mining era only began in the 1850s-60s, and most mining camps were concentrated in the mountains away from the large bison concentrations on the plains.

All of this suggests that hunting of plains bison by white people was insignificant before the 1870s, yet bison herds were already disappearing from many of their former haunts.

Bison herds were also extirpated in the eastern parts of the Great Plains territory by the 1840s.

Yet bison herds were extirpated on the fringes of their ranges throughout the early 1800s. In his book, The Hunting of the Buffalo, author Douglas Branch reports that the Metis (mixed-race children of French fur trappers and Indian wives), residing in the Red River Valley of Manitoba, killed over 650,000 bison in the twenty years between 1820 and 1840. By 1847 bison were extirpated from southern Manitoba, northern Minnesota, and North Dakota.

Trader Edwin Denig, who spent 23 years on the Upper Missouri, remarked in 1855 the territory of the Sioux tribe East of the Missouri River “used to be the great range for the buffalo, but of late years they are found in greater numbers west of the Missouri.”

Similarly, on the western fringe of the bison range, fur trapper Osborn Russell observed the slaughter of several thousand bison by the Bannock Indians near what is now Idaho Falls, Idaho. Russell described the scene: “I walked out with the chief to a small hillock to watch the view of slaughter after the cloud of dust had passed away in the prairie which was covered with the slain several thousand cows were killed without burning a single grain of gunpowder.”

A few years later, along the Portneuf River near present-day Pocatello, Idaho, Russell noted: “In the year 1836 large herds of buffalo could be seen in almost every little valley on the small branches of this stream: at this time the only traces which could be seen of them were the scattered bones of former years, deeply indented in the earth, were overgrown with grass and weeds.”



By the 1830s a decline in bison numbers was noted at Fort Union trading post (trading posts were all called forts in the early days) on the Montana-North Dakota Border. Photo George Wuerthner

In the late 1800s, bison had been nearly extirpated from the West (in part by Indian hide hunting). For instance, by 1830, a decline of bison numbers was already noted at Fort Union on the North Dakota and Montana borders.

In 1834 Lucien Fontenelle told a visitor that the “diminution of the buffalo was very considerable. A survey of the Upper Missouri in 1849 noted a lack of bison, and by the 1850s, bison were becoming scarce in Kansas and Nebraska.



The 1859 Raynolds Expedition did not encounter its first live bison until they reached the Powder River Country of Wyoming and Montana. Photo George Wuerthner

Bison across the eastern portion of the plains were largely gone by the 1860s. In a transect across much of the Great Plains in 1859, Captain Wiliam Raynolds, guided by non-other than the famous fur trapper Jim Bridger, took accurate daily observations of the wildlife they encountered. They traveled all across what is now the state of South Dakota without seeing a live bison. They finally observed some large herds in the Powder River country of northeast Wyoming and along the lower Yellowstone River near what is today Miles City, Montana. However, once they left the Yellowstone Valley and moved south into what is now Wyoming, they did not encounter any more bison that year.



Fort Benton, on the Missouri River in Montana, was the upriver limit for boat transportation. Photo George Wuerthner

The expedition wintered on the North Platte River in Wyoming. In the spring of 1860, Raynolds and his men proceeded around the Wind River Range, into Jackson Hole over the Tetons to where Driggs, Idaho is now located, thence over Raynolds Pass on the Montana Idaho border. They encountered a small herd of about 100 bison on the Upper Madison River but failed to see any other live bison for hundreds of miles. The expedition continued down the Missouri River (all once the heart of Montana bison habitat) to Fort Benton. Only after they passed Fort Benton did they see more live bison.

In total, Raynolds and his party traversed several thousand miles of the prime bison habitat on the plains and mountain valleys of the Rockies and saw few bison over much of that route.

As bison numbers declined, it put more pressure on the remaining bison herds, and by extension, the tribes that still occupied these lands. For instance, the intrusion of the Sioux into Crow territory and the Black Hills in the 1850-the 1860s was in part driven by Sioux’s desire for control of bison.

For instance, as early as 1849, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs wrote that the destruction of the bison herds “must, at no late day, so far diminish this chief resource of their subsistence and trade, as not only to entail upon them great suffering, but it will bring different tribes into competition in their hunting expeditions and lead to bloody collisions and exterminating wars between them.”

The Blackfeet were overly aggressive in protecting the bison plains of Montana against all other tribes. One of the advantages the Blackfeet had over other tribes was the acquisition of the gun earlier than other tribes. Unlike tribes further south, the Blackfeet had access to firearms from Hudson Bay Company traders in Canada.

The fear of Blackfeet encounters is one reason some tribes like the Nez Perce, Bannock, and Shoshoni, who lived outside of the natural range of bison but hunted on the plains, often choose to pass through Yellowstone on their way to hunt buffalo. Some authors contend the Yellowstone Plateau was a demilitarized zone where travel to the bison hunting fields was relatively safe.



Some tribes used the Bannock Trail across Yellowstone NP to avoid the more aggressive Blackfeet warriors who guarded the bison plains of Montana. George Wuerthner

The Bannock Trail, which crossed Yellowstone National Park, was in use from 1838 until 1878– a mere 40 years. The Yellowstone passage avoided the easier route by way of the Three Forks of the Missouri but this pathway was within the Blackfeet territory. For the same reason, the path was used by other tribes as well, including the Nez Perce, Flathead, and the Lemhi Shoshone.

THE BIG KILL

The commercial killing of bison by white hunters was rapidly expanded in the 1870s when railroad access across the plans provided a ready means of transporting the heavy bison hides eastward. Another factor was the end of the Civil War, which left many soldiers without employment. However, with keen sharpshooter ability, and Sharp’s buffalo rifles developed after the war, they could kill a bison at long range. Another factor was the increasing industrialization use of bison leather for machinery belts which provided a growing financial incentive for bison hunters.

Most people know the infamous claim to fame of William F. Cody, who is reputed to have killed 4,280 bison to feed railroad construction crews. Cody was a harbinger of the bison slaughter that was to occur as the rails moved westward.

It’s essential to recognize that bison were essentially extinct by the early 1880s. The last wild bison were killed in 1886 in Montana and in the southern Plains by 1887. in other words, a short decade or so of commercial hunting supposedly wiped out the “millions” of bison. No doubt commercial bison hunting was a factor in the destruction of plains bison, but it ignores the culpability of Indian hunting that for decades was descreaing bison numbers.

While the early fur traders set up posts in Indian territory to obtain beaver pelts, the reluctance of Indians to spend much time beaver trapping resulted in a significant shift in strategy. In 1820s, fur companies hired white trappers like Peter Skene Ogden, William Sublette, David Jackson, Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger, and Kit Carson. They traveled in large groups of 50-100 trappers as protection against hostile tribes. These brigades wandered the West to obtain pelts.

Tribal people like the Blackfeet, Crow and other plains tribes considered beaver trapping beneath their dignity. They were bison hunters, and hunting bison is what they did not only for their subsistence but also for trade to obtain everything from pretty cloth to rifles.



Both Indians and traders preferred to kill bison cows because their meat was tastier, and hides softer. Thus they focused killing on the reproductive segment of the herd. Photo George Wuerthner

One of the factors that contributed to the gradual decline in bison numbers was the preference for cow bison both by tribal people and traders. So hunting was focused on the reproductive segment of herds.

According to one estimate, the number of bison killed for their teepees, food, and other uses was about 25 bison a year per individual. How many Native Americans lived on the plains in the mid-1800s is conjecture, but some estimates put it at 250,000-300,000 people. Using the lower number multiplied by 25 and you get more than 6 million bison killed just for “personal use.”

And this number does not include the kill by non-plains tribes like the Nez Perce, Flathead, Utes, and others that made annual treks to hunt bison on the plains.

Then add in the bison killed for trade. We have some reliable numbers on this because the trading posts kept relatively accurate numbers on the furs they acquired. Depending on the post, hundreds of thousands of bison pelts were traded annually, and collectively towards the 1850s and 1860s, some estimates suggest well over a million bison were being traded by Indians at the trading posts on the Great Plains.

By the mid-1800s, most Indians were utterly dependent on trade goods for their survival. Whether the acquisition of metal pots, metal knives, blankets, or pretty cloth for clothing, tribes were already immersed in the global economy, and bison hides were their currency.

Though bow and arrows were still used for bison hunting, rifles and ammunition were essential for war.

It is instructive how much transportation influenced the fur trade. In Canada, where furs were transported mainly by canoe brigades, bison hides were considered too cumbersome to transport. But the opening of the plains by boat transport on rivers like the Missouri allowed shipment of heavy bison hides to eastern centers.

To determine how detrimental Indian bison hunting may have been on bison numbers, one has to estimate how many buffalo existed on the plains. Estimates (which I hasten to add are all mere guesses) is that anywhere from 20 million to 100 million bison were living on the Great Plains at the beginning of the 1800s. https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/viewFile/11258/10531

Some historians believe Indian hunting was out of balance with bison reproduction as early as the 1800s. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/188080102.pdf

By the 1860s, bison herds had already shrunk. With the completion of the Union Pacific Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, the bison herds were effectively divided into a southern herd of five million and a smaller northern herd of a million and a half animals. In other words, an estimated six and a half million bison left alive before the great slaughter.



Indian warfare precluded white hunters from most of the Northern Plains until the 1880s. Pictured here is Custer’s gravesite where he was killed by the Sioux and other tribes in 1876 at the Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana.Photo George Wuerthner

Again, this is before there was any significant white settlement and hunting on the Great Plains. Keep in mind that hostile tribes largely precluded the white settlement of the region. The northern plains were entirely in Indian possession. Events like the Sioux slaughter of more than a thousand white men, women, and children in Minnesota in 1862 or Custer’s demise at the Little Bighorn in 1876, and similar events in the southern Plains by the Comanche and Apache, occurred throughout the 1860s and 1870s. These effectively limited white settlement and intrusions across much of the plains. And except for a few trade routes and mining centers like Denver and mining operations in the mountains of the West, most of the Great Plains and Rockies were mainly under Indian control.

The 100 million estimate is likely a significant inflation and is based on a guess made by Colonel Dodge (Dodge City, Kansas is named for him). Dodge encountered a great herd of bison near the Arkansas River that took days to pass by and suggested it contained 12 million bison. He then extrapolated from his estimate to suggest millions upon millions of bison were found on the plains.

The problem with Dodge’s estimate is that he did not even put it into print until 16 years after he encountered the herd. And like a lot of extrapolations, it neglects to consider while great congregations of animals do occur during migration, much of the landscape is empty of animals.

Other travelers also noted a similar abundance, likely seen during a migration when smaller herds were bunched up for the annual trek.

I have seen how this error can occur. I have watched caribou migrations in Alaska’s Brooks Range, where I have witnessed ten thousand animals pass through a valley. It would be easy to assume that the next valley also had ten thousand caribou. But with modern radio transmitters, airplanes, etc., we know that there were many valleys with no caribou. A similar problem existed with all the attempts to articulate bison numbers.

If we assume that the 100 million number is an exaggeration, let’s suggest for argument’s sake maybe 20 million is more accurate. Suppose tribes were killing 6-8 million bison annually and primarily reproductive animals. In that case, it is easy to see how reports of declining bison herds BEFORE commercial bison hunting occurred might have led to bison’s demise.

In 1870, the first year of active commercial bison hunting, approximately 250,000 hides were shipped East. In 1877, it was estimated that you could find 60,000-80,000 bison hides awaiting shipment in Dodge City at any time.

By the late 1870s, it is estimated that 2000 bison hunters were roaming the plains slaughtering bison for their hides. Tens of thousands of bison hides were shipped from Kansas City, Dodge City, and other rail towns. As the railroads moved West, so did the killing.



The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 enabled heavy bison hides to be shipped efficiently and promoted the massive bison slaughter of the 1870s and 1880s. Photo George Wuerthner

In 1873 the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad shipped 424,000 hides east. Similar numbers were shipped on other rail lines so that as many as 1,250,000 hides were sent east from the killing fields. White hunters, desperate to get the last bison, were even trespassing on to Indian Reservations in their pursuit of hides.

I need not go into more details about the slaughter, as many other authors documented the enormous numbers of bison killed during this short period. Suffice to say, commercial hunting combined with rail access was the final coup de grace for the wild bison of the plans.

However, lest we continue to place all the blame solely on commercial hunters, there is more nuance to the issue than most people acknowledge. Another contributing factor seldom mentioned by the “commercial hunting eliminated bison herds” is the influence of climate change. Starting in the early 1800s, the Great Plains began to dry out. This contributed to a reduction in the carrying capacity of the plains, which occurred at the same time that Indian and white bison hunting was increasing.

In the southern Plains, historian Dan Flores in his book American Serengeti suggests competition between bison and vast herds of wild horses may have had a limiting influence on bison numbers.

While it is often portrayed that this final slaughter of the bison was widely supported by the U.S. Army and most politicians to subdue the tribes, there was significant opposition to the slaughter. Some members of Congress and in the military thought the butchery was a shameful policy.

For example, Arizona Congressman R.C. McCormick called the bison slaughter “wantonly wicked” and considered it “vandalism”. McCormick introduced legislation in 1871 to halt the butchery that: “excepting for the purpose of using the meat for food or preserving the skin, it shall be unlawful for any person to kill the bison or buffalo found anywhere upon the public lands of the United States; and for the violation of the law the offender shall, upon conviction before any court of competent jurisdiction, be liable to a fine of $100 for each animal killed”.

Major General Hazen added his objection to the butchery. He wrote: “The theory that the buffalo should be killed to deprive the Indians of food is a fallacy, and these people are becoming harmless under a rule of justice.” Lieutenant Colonel Brackett, another military officer, added his objections, saying: “The wholesale butchery of buffaloes upon the plains is as needless as it is cruel.”

In 1874 new legislation was introduced by Rep. Fort of Illinois, which declared it would be unlawful for anyone, not an Indian to kill, wound, or in any way destroy any female buffalo of any age found at large within any Territory of the United States. In the Congressional debate that followed Fort’s legislative effort, another member of Congress argued that killing off the bison was the only means to “civilize” the tribes. Fort bellowed: “I am not in favor of civilizing the Indian by starving him to death, by destroying the means which God has given him for his support.”

Fort’s legislation passed both the House and Senate, but President Ulysses Grant allowed the bill to die in a pocket veto.

However, despite the apparent decline in bison, the northern herd was still being slaughtered by Indians. Between 1874 and 1877, between 80,000 to 100,000 buffalo robes were shipped from Fort Benton in Montana annually, with 12,000 hides contributed by the Blackfeet tribe alone. Again, keep in mind that the northern plains were still in control of the Indians, with only a few white traders living among them.

In a final desperate act like the famous “Ghost Dance” that led to the Wounded Knee tragedy in 1890, a Comanche medicine man with Quanah Parker, the famous chief of the tribe, declared that the Great Spirit would protect the tribe from bullets. In June 1774, the Comanches and the Arapahoes, Kiowa, Apaches, and Cheyenne agreed to attack buffalo hunters based in an old fort named Adobe Walls. Like a lot of Indian superstition, the Great Spirt wasn’t available on that day. The Buffalo hunters with Sharp’s buffalo rifles were effective at cutting down the Indians at long range.

The Medicine Man who had the vision declared that his medicine was ruined because a Cheyenne member of the war party killed a skunk the day before, thus breaking the special magic of his vision.

By 1887, the last bison in the southern herds were killed. A similar rapid expansion of hide hunting occurred in the northern plains once the Northern Pacific Railroad reached Bismarck, North Dakota, in 1876. With the near extinction of the southern herds, bison hunters flooded into the northern Great Plains in the early 1880s after the last great Indian Wars were ended and effectively made it safe for white hunters to travel the region. The remaining large herds were still found on the best bison habitat in a triangle between the Musselshell River, Yellowstone River, and Missouri River. An estimated 5000 bison hunters, not to mention Indian hunters, flooded into the Yellowstone country and quickly eliminated the last vestiges of what were once great herds of bison. By the late 1880s, only about 100 wild bison were left in Montana.

I go through this detail to demonstrate that many of the assumptions and traits ascribed to the presumed “conservation ethic” of Indigenious people can be explained in other ways. No matter where they originate, humans have similar biological controls on their behavior. In general, all people seek to further their self-interest. And among more “primitive” cultures (I use that term to denote more limited technologies), the self-awareness of their actions on wildlife and natural processes was limited.

As I hope I’ve shown in this essay, if you change the technology, population, or other factors, humans still tend to exploit the natural world for their benefit. If there is an incentive whether financial or political power to exploit Nature, most humans behave the same no matter what culture they may represent. That is why conservation strategies that strictly control human exploitation like national parks and other reserves are necessary. The idea that Indigenous people will create sustainable systems in an age where nearly everyone is embedded to some degree in the global economy and the paradigm is based more on inaccurate revisionist history

Source?


What narrative? Never heard such.... Always told game scarse in peace, and plentiful between tribes at war. Injuns were killers. Chit, their ancestors are blamed for wiping out the megafauna...

Excellent - thanks for posting.

Honestly, a long read that I didn’t finish.

However, I’ve long held the view that the Indian was not some benevolent caretaker of the land. The story goes that they were “environmentalists” would not over-hunt an area and move in order to allow game to re-establish itself.

Total BS. They were hunter-gatherers. When game became scarce they moved because it was a matter of survival! There was no conscious “steward of the land” garbage. They simply needed food and went where they found it.

I have seen old photos of large mounds of bison skulls and bones, what was the value of the bones? Just curious

"Another contributing factor seldom mentioned by the “commercial hunting eliminated bison herds” is the influence of climate change. "

LOL

Yep.

Give it up!

Indians were not saints and engaged in slaughter just as the whites did. This is not news.

The BIG problems was that whites were in the millions and spreading like locust in the last half of the 1800s. No amount of nuance will change that fact. The bison had to go so ranchers and farmers could industrialize agriculture in the western US. The Bison disappeared because of European settlement. Full stop.This does not make Europeans bad. Our ancestors were not evil because of it. It is what it is. ALL GAME IN THE WEST DECLINED because of European settlement.

Same story with the timber harvests in the east. Wasted billions of board feet of priceless timber. Our ancestors raped the North American continent. That is a fact.

The savages got the horse, and the rifle, and they began the slaughter and the extermination of the buffalo. I knew they killed a lot of buffalo but I didn't know they killed them so wantonly. Very interesting article.

"Wolves and grizzlies we're nothing but trouble, so they wiped them out." Grandpa RIP

The bones and skulls were shipped to fertilize plants.

TY Leon, I didnt know that

Stopped here about 7 years ago. There was a little presentation about the noble savages, how they ran the buff off the cliff. As the article says, when they were working on I 90 they discovered these bones in the ground and routed the hi way around it fearing it was a sacred burial site... They did not like my questions pertaining to wasting the meat and the hides.

VORE BUFFALO JUMP INTO AN ARCHEOLOGICAL DIG


In the 1970’s the engineers looking to extend interstate 90 West found a giant sinkhole on the Vore family lands. When they surveyed the sinkhole in order to fill it up with concrete, they found that it was a giant pit of bison remains. Needless to say, the engineers moved the interstate a little bit south and the archeologists set up camp.

The Vore sinkhole site is massive. Although only a small percentage of the pit has been excavated so far, archeologists expect to find the remnants of approximately 20,000 bison as well as the tools used to trap and hunt those bison.

I always questioned the story of no waste,
based on the cliff driving and killing of mired buffalo.


How do you drive just the right number off a cliff.
When you have no refrigeration, no equipment to move or hoist,
And no lighting to work at night?

Of course the rivers and dams where natives have unlimited
fish harvesting rights prove them superior at managing resources.
Everyone wants an Indian group to have unfettered access to
fishing. The waters under such conditions are always the best
cared for and never overfished.

Them injuns fug up everything

Tired of the entire "my ancestors" and "harmony" platitudes. Everyone's ancestors lived 'at peace with the land' at some point in time. Some tribes just happened to develop industry and others chose to remain in the stone age. The truth is every organism has a single goal-to survive, and every organism will attempt to destroy anything that impedes that goal. Nothing lives harmoniously with anything else, given the opportunity, any living thing would eradicate everything it does not need to survive with not a care as to the competition's demise. Humans are the only species of any kind that has any consideration for any other specie. Native Americans were as bloodthirsty and destructive as any other ethnicity, they just weren't very good at it. When they acquired the tools of destruction, they rapidly moved in that direction, just as every other tribe throughout history.

Great article, thanks.

I don’t recall if it was mentioned but buffalo bones were largely absent from pre-contact middens east of the Mississippi, suggesting they were not found in those areas, presumably hunted out.

Subsequent to the 16th Century DeSoto expedition and the first rounds of massive epidemics depopulating the Southeast, by the 18th Century and the arrival of the Colonial Frontier buffalo were present as Far East as Virginia, after 200 years the Indian population being still a fraction of what it had been in DeSoto’s visit.

Here in Texas drought absolutely did hammer buffalo numbers in the 1850’s, a thing which still happens about every half-century. The 1850’s drought causing starving Comanches to try settling on Reserves where they were encouraged to take up farming.

Also not mentioned is disease, the African-ancestry long-horned cattle introduced by the Spanish carried both brucellosis and the tick-borne Texas fever, both lethal to buffalo. At the time of the Alamo you already had to go 100 miles north and west of San Antonio reliably to find buffalo.

By the 1860’s there were famously 6 million feral Longhorns in Texas and few buffalo. So much so that in the 1860’s the Kiowa and Comanches began the process of transforming into a cattle-based agrarian economy. Large numbers of Texas cattle were run off, when Kit Carson went up on the Panhandle at First Adobe Walls (1964?) he found theKiowa and Comanche camps kept large herds of cattle.

The Aztecs laugh in the general direction of liberal historians that embrace the "noble savage" concept.

BIrdwatcher, I’d heard that the buffalo carried brucellosis and they were killed off so as not to infect the cattle.

Cliff Notes?

That's an excellent article, thanks Salmonella.

I agree the whole "Noble Savage" thing living in harmony with the land is a crock. And the article is dead on about low population/low technology having the most influence. The advent of the horse changed a lot of things for the Indians.

When Dominguez and Escalante made their multi-cultural diversity tours up Eastern Utah and down through Western Colorado in the name of Spain, the Mountain Utes acquired the horse. Along with being the about the only Indian tribe not superstitious of the high country above timberline (which they used to their advantage) the Mt Utes kicked butt of both other Indian tribes and Spanish settlements, and lived pretty good for almost a century--until the evil White Man showed up for good and ruined the party......

The current interglacial period has probably been among the warmest, the popular Megafauna like Woolly Mammoths were in decline in the northern hemisphere even before humans set foot on this continent. Humans in some instances may have hastened the extinction of remnant populations, but climate change was the real culprit.

The last Mammoths in North America were found off the coastal islands of what is now Canada and Alaska 7000 years ago. In response to the changing climate they had shrunk to the point where they were 4-5 ft at the shoulder. Mini-Mammoths. I wonder if they would've make good pack stock for hauling out elk?

Noble savage, evil white man. Not.

It wasn't uncommon for them to light range fires to herd buffalo off of cliffs or into deep water. When the fires had done their jobs, they just kept burning until winter in some cases.

That's where the market hunters butchered bison. The elk bone piles--elk were actually killed off first--in some cases are as big as the bison bone piles. The market hunting of elk is not as well documented as bison because elk were killed for their meat and hides earlier. The bone piles are mostly found in northeastern Arkansas,, eastern Missouri and eastern Iowa. The part of the article that suggests market hunting didn't play a role in their demise ignores that evidence.

More likely the mini mammoth phenomenon was due to island restrictions. Like key deer.

Fires were not uncommon but I highly doubt the herd cliff coincidence was very common. It did happen because we have evidence, but common I doubt.

Bison can swim.

Also, the number of bison on the Great Plains was never more than 30 million, and probably more like 15-20 million. 75 years ago the number of 100 million bison was thrown out there, and became gospel for decades--and various environmental groups still intentionally use that figure It's only when the amount of biomass was estimated it was realized that no way more than 30 million bison could exist--and that is an upper limit.

The article is good, but I think in some cases it is overstating the effect Indians had on wildlife populations.

Another misconception is the assumption that every animal (in this case, Bison), regardless whether struck by arrow, spear, bullet or whatever instrument used died quickly and was soon recovered by hunters.

No telling the number of unrecovered wounded animals that didn't DRT but eventually died of their wounds and rotted away simply because there were so many that it wasn't worth the effort to track down and finish off. It was much, much easier and quicker to just kill another.

Jeebus Christo!

You been taking ques from Kamo?

Anyway, you white fuggers keep telling yourselves anything you need in order to assuage your guilt.

We (WASP - White Angelo Saxon Protestants) also had some campaigns organized by our Washington royalty to exterminate bison to weaken and disperse our native Americans. Similarly, but not intentional: When canneries ran out of salmon stock on our PNW streams, they moved to BC and Alaska and dammed, diked, and trapped entire salmon runs at the mouths of rivers with no thought of upstream villages needing the same to endure subsequent winter. Entire communities perished.

When Oregon became a state, one of the stipulations was there would be no dams in rivers supporting anadromous fish. That one sure went by the wayside. For the last 40 years I lived to spend 2 to 3 weeks angling for steelhead in our Columbia tributaries. That fishery is closed now with runs down to about 15% of historic numbers. I suspect Idaho has adopted the same regulations.

Writers describing Africa in the late 1800's painted pictures of landscapes almost completely devoid of game. Rinderpest (accompanying cattle from India) seriously ravaged all of the hoofed wildlife. Fortunately, there were some individuals with the genetics capable of weathering that storm and there was some recovery. One does not see seasonal migrations, however, that cover entire valleys and take days to pass.

As to wounded waste. Even the briefest reading of Teddy Roosevelt's outings

Given economic opportunity, I don't think there is a noble race on our planet.

You are correct it probably played a role, but mainland Mammoths were also shrinking in size, just not as small as the island variety.

Lol.....well said.

It is pretty amazing to think 7000 years ago there were mammoths still to be found in the wold.

This book has a good section on mega fauna.
https://www.amazon.com/Deer-World-Valerius-Geist/dp/0811704963

Good article OP and good post Hat. That’s about how I see it too.

That's the spirit!

Need a link/source for the OP.

Why does everyone think that all white people in the USA are descended from Angles and Saxons?

Answer me that!

Thank you, kaywoodie! I am a Celt and we don't like Saxons. We killed them as many as we could.

Because you round eye bastards all look the same.

Thank you SK!

Damn right we do Conrad!!! 🤣

Where do Albanian/Sicilians fit in that Angles and Saxons deal?

Oh, wait, that's right. Those WASPS didn't want us around, or my Celtic Irish ancestors either.

“You say the Indians honored and respected the Buffalo. How’d they do that? They killed them and ate them!!”

Ted Nugent

I rest my case

Now, back to the buffalo jump

Gypos and goombas.

https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2021/06/01/indian-culpability-in-bison-demise/

Looks like the same article

Texas tick fever (bovine babesiosis) had a lot to do with the demise of bison. Records of market-killed bison numbers do not account for even conservative reproduction rates in the herds.

One need only look at a few native communities to get an idea how well they would manage our lands and natural resources.

You mean the cattle had it, spread into bison, then back to the cattle, bad bison. (Note, no question mark used). LOL

Like

One thing to think about is that for Indians back in those days fat was hard to come by as wild animals are very lean and eating just lean meat can lead to protein poisoning or "rabbit starvation". The people who killed bison for their tongues were probably after the fat in them....their bodies were probably craving it. Also the organs were probably prized for the same reason. Sugar and carbs had to be a mostly seasonal thing and what fruit and berries they had were not sweet like our hybridized versions. Fat is the other concentrated source of energy to run a human body and brain.

I think I remember accounts of Lewis and Clark's men struggling to do hard labor on a diet of deer and elk and were glad to get beaver, other rodents, and dogs from the Indians because of the fat.

Absolutely. Humans are just another biological species on this planet. Like any species the human populations have always expanded to the limits their resources could bear.

Thus humans have always "lived in harmony with nature" just like any other apex predator and omnivore. They breed until they experience a cataclysmic population reduction, then they breed again.

The Native American population is estimated to have been around 60,000,000 in 1492 when European pathogens began racing across this hemisphere. It is estimated that number was reduced to 6,000,000 by year 1500. That number is estimated to be further reduced to 600,000 by year 1800.

So yes, the bison was at the height of a population explosion by 1800, as the population of their sole serious predator had been decimated. Much like cottontails or jackrabbits if something eliminates all the foxes, coyotes, and raptors in their environment.

If one wishes to discuss the elimination of the bison herds during the 19'th century, it is well to remember there were not enough Native Americans left on the plains to make any kind of dent in their population.

It is also well to remember that the US Army put a bounty on bison. $1/tongue when $1 was a good day's wages. You did not even have to skin them. Just cut out the tongue and pack it in a barrel with salt.

The skinners were scavengers after the fact during that time. The power distribution belts used in most factories, similar to the familiar tractor to threshing machine belts, were most commonly made from bison leather when it was commonly available.

Somewhere Union Pacific has published a chart of the hundreds of thousands of tons of bison bones transported from the prairies per year. I have seen it in the past, but can not locate it at this time.

All this to say: No the Native American was no noble steward of his environment. He was just a human animal like every other race on the planet.

Fall bear.

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.

Look at any reservation today and you will see this is true.

If we ever do get visited by extra terrestrials/aliens we had better kill them on sight.
Remember "To Serve Man"?

Just cut out the tongue, left the rest as carrion.

Crawl back into your igloo and plan a whale hunt!😉😁

So true. We freed them from the frozen north and get no respect.

In IIRC 1745, the Cherokees, and just the Cherokees, brung in 145,000 deer hides to British traders in Savannah.

Go to the old Fort Pitt Museum in Pittsburg PA, where they documented 298,000 bucks (deer hides) brung in by the Indians in 1763. Deer hides was big business, taken in part by mass deer drives at night.

Maybe not so much fur by then, the depletion of furbearers for trade had already sparked the Five Nations of Iroquois to drive out other tribes from the Great Lakes and Upper Ohio Country a whole Century earlier.

Where did Arizona get a congressman in 1870?
Disease, hunting, sport all must have helped as did good iol climate change.

The deforestation was a big factor in passenger pigeons

AND. Can I get a mini mammoth to replace my pot belly pig?

Yes Native People killed many animals, some to near extinction, and continue to do so.

My Grandfathers killed thousands of Buffalo, they would go on Buffalo hunts from Saskatchewan to the Rocky Mountains.
That was their occupation, they worked for the Hudson bay company, and the North west company providing food for the employees that were drivers of the Canadian fur trade.

It is true there was a connection to the land, via the animals that provided food and clothing, they had no knowledge of the extent the damage they did to the survival of a species such as the Buffalo, how could they?

Special interest groups in the USA and Canada have discovered a soft spot, they now try to use it to destroy hunting opportunities for non Native people, I see it everyday, its all about control.

The best thing to happen to any species on this Continent is.... Science...... all species of People should try it.

Because so few are as good-looking as the Irish, of course.

Ya, us Celts killed almost as many Anglo-Saxons as we did each other 😎

Supposed to be the origin of "buck" to mean $1 as that was the going price of a nice buck's skin.

Dude.....

“.....blubber, its what’s fer dinner....”

If that ain’t true at your house then STFU......

Poser...

TLDR

.... but I see your 2500 words and I'll raise you 3000 words.

I'll leave it to others to make the call.

On these Buffalo hunts they went after the Cows for meat, the Bulls for the hide. When the Cows were targeted for superior meat, it was the beginning of the end for the Buffalo.

In Canada we have seen a similar thing in recent times, we do it everyday with other species like fish, our salmon stocks are a perfect example......man is a slow learner.

The Irish were made a bitch by anybody that seriously tried. Simply put there was nothing on that island worth having, so they left the cousin-fugkers alone for centuries lol.

Not that I disagree with you on this but still ...

Lay off the fire water ... and gfy with that a sausage.

I have zero guilt for anything my fellow white fuggers did or do.

Just another sore loser.

There’s almost no Viking DNA among the modern Irish, perhaps your guys were Gay.

This speaks of truth for sure.

On the plains the introduction of the horse made some indians more equal than others.

It sped up the buffaloes demise as well as other tribes.

They ground up the bones for bone meal for farm crops.

"my guys" include some of the speckle faced gingers according to the DNA folks. Them that wanted to took all the hot ones and left the rest, who would become what the rest of the world recognizes as Irish today.

Still, I'd rather be a potato eating papist than a Stone Age just barely can make fire Indian if given my choice lol.

When I did Ancestry.com they got us down to practically a city block in far Southwest Cork 😎

You prob’ly know that it came out they could get that specific on account of widespread fecundity on the one hand, and poverty on the other, induced three or four generations of inbreeding before the famine hit

So Ancestry.com stopped being so specific.

Hey, I’m a pedigree.

Wait, you mean the Indians running entire herds of Buffalo off cliffs had something to do with their demise???

Who would have thought???

Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota

Another big factor was the destruction of nesting sites. Hunters would raze a forest to harvest the squabs. Then they'd shoot the returning adults. The birds weren't able to reproduce and a whole generation disappeared in a very short time. This was the fault of the white man, not the Indians. Commercial hunting decimated the birds.

No doubt widespread commercial hunting played a role in the
passenger pigeon demise. Maybe ensured it. Eventually.

However. It was caused by the chestnut blight.
They lost their habitat and food source.

Very interesting thread, a good read.

the characterization of the indian as a 'noble redman' is vastly over blown.

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.

Cliffs with 4 foot drops will do, and broadcast burning, the record of that is in the soil, can get a big heard channled nicely.

Yep. Elk too. They were once “plains game” and roamed the plains in huge herds. They weren’t just found in the Rockies like mostly today.

Yep.

Francois de la Harpe wrote in his journal while headed up the red river to the French garrison at Poste des Nachitos states that one of the Canadiens in their company killed a “whistling deer” in the area of the Rapides. ( Queue DirtFarmer! This is in his AO!😁). This was in tbe 1730’s.

Yep.

I did my part to rid the plains of bufflers.

Hanging on my wall up in the crows nest....kinda dark

Good.

Me too.

Good Grease
The hunters went out with guns
at dawn.
We had no meat in the village,
no food for the tribe and the dogs.
No caribou in the caches.

All day we waited.
At last!
As darkness hung at the river
we children saw them far away.
Yes! They were carrying caribou!
We jumped and shouted!

By the fires that night
we feasted.

The old ones chuckled,
sucking and smacking,
sopping the juices with sourdough bread.
The grease would warm us
when hungry winter howled.

Grease was beautiful
oozing,
dripping and running down our chins,
brown hands shining with grease.
We talk of it
when we see each other
far from home.

Remember the marrow
sweet in the bones?
We grabbed for them like candy.
Good.
Gooooood.

Good grease.

Mary TallMountain

Oh keeper of the lore.

Where does the "Nachitos", Natchitoches, "Nagadish" word come from?

And, can we Sicilians and Albanians get reparations from the Greeks and Ottomans? (Yeah, I know, good luck with that!)

That was an observation made by some white people about Indians about 50 to 100 years after they had all been killed out or relocated.

I read a book called "Scalp Dance" which was about the war for the great plains. It was mostly about the battles but one of the things from the book that stuck with me was how angry westerners were with eastern politicians "one hundred years separated from the war whoop" who wanted to pursue a policy of benevolence towards the Indians in the west. The people in the west who actually had to deal with them and were being burned out, raped, abducted, tortured, and murdered by them wanted to kill them all.

The Lewis and Clark journals recorded that they started eating elk in SD and ate it the rest of the trip - except over the Rockies. They crossed the Bitterroots and Idaho in the winter when the elk and deer weren't there. The records show that during their stay at Ft Clatsop, they killed 128 elk. They were trying to dry the meat for the trip home but it was so wet that most of it spoiled.

It's not generally known that on the return trip Lewis was mistaken for an elk by one of the men and shot in the butt. He spent quite a bit of time lying on his stomach in a canoe.

Caddoan word. Old archaic words that the Local Adai Caddo say isn’t spoken anymore. It is thought to translate to either "The place of the fruit trees" or "The place of the paw paw trees".

I believe it was Cruzatte that shot him in da butt. He was known for failing eyesight.

Beefs way better than Buffalo anyway. Who cares. Edk

Elk were far preferred over buffalo for meat and robes by most.

I had a feeling you might know.

Thanks

Much the same happened with musk ox in Alaska. Natives got guns without accompanying conservation views and wiped them out. One newspaper account ascribed it to "sport hunters" at a time when there were few whites in the territory, much less "sports" .

They did print my nastygram, which i kept polite, but the rag no longer prints letters for some odd reason .

iirc , wrangle island was the last holdout of the mamoth, as recently as 1,000 years ago Mini mammoths

Tag

Often overlooked: Bent’s Fort on the upper Arkansas (??). Trading with many Plains Tribes, tons of trade good poled upriver each year, by the 1840’s tens of thousands of buffalo hides each year sent downstream.

Good times until cholera brung West by the ‘49ers hit.

Bent's fort was on the Santa Fe trail not on the Missouri.

The fort is located east of Denver on the Arkansas River.

I was too young to remember the buffler slaughter...but observe the native stewards of the land and their eagerness to remove the Irongate hydro dam and 4 others on the Klamath River. Built in 1908, the hatchery there maintained salmon runs for a hundred years, through the placer gold mining era from 1850 to 1941 when the river ran brown with mud. Flood control, power generation and so on. The return runs were so plentiful, commercial fishing was allowed in the 40's and 50's. OK, why are the Indian tribes hot to do this....follow the money every single time...written into the dam removal projects are the requirement for dozens of tribal members to serve at insanely high wages as cultural advisors, biologists (with no college degree of any kind), site monitors etc.The low summer flows when the dams are gone will kill the salmon by disease from high water temps, the silt load from the reservoirs in winter will suffocate the egg nests. The noble red man my arse.