The slaughter of buffalo as presented by Nineteenth Century worldviews is perceived by many as a closed chapter in the history of the West. It is often viewed, when looking back from a comfortable distance, as a somewhat regrettable but necessary evil. Overwhelmingly, it is considered an event that is over, past.
The struggles between Caucasian and Indian, between cattle and bison, and between two strikingly dissimilar ways of life remain alive and strong today. The extirpation of the bison herds in the 19th century and the current harassment and slaughter outside Yellowstone National Park are closely related and fueled by many of the same economic motivations, personal fears, and misunderstandings.
The bison were exterminated, in part, to create and maintain a dominant “cattle culture” across the Great Plains and the West—and, unfortunately for Native Peoples and wildlife—it worked. Even now, in the 21st century, many of the same forces are still in place.
Buffalo once roamed from the eastern seaboard to Oregon and California, from Great Slave Lake in northern Alberta down into northern Mexico. Although no one will ever know exactly how many bison once inhabited North America, estimates range from twenty to forty million.
“It would have been as easy to count or to estimate the number of leaves in a forest as to calculate the number of buffaloes living at any given time during the history of the species previous to 1870.“
by William Hornaday, a naturalist who spent considerable time in the West.
The great herds were not decimated overnight. The slaughter was a gradual process, reaching its full momentum in the 1870s. The Native Americans of the Great Plains had relied upon and hunted buffalo for thousands of years. Without the arrival of the Caucasians—and with them the gun, the horse, and the market for bison products—it seems likely the Indians could have lived sustainably with the bison far into the future.
As the plains tribes acquired horses and guns from their southern neighbors—who in turn had received them from the Spanish—the Indians were able to kill buffalo with greater ease. As the market for buffalo (particularly hides) emerged in the 1820s—and as more and more European bison hunters came westward, the bison population began to decline precipitously.
A separate but equally powerful force were the growing middle and upper classes, which had a nearly insatiable appetite for beef—and the postwar economic boom gave them the buying power to satisfy it. Texas alone could not meet the demand, so ranchers turned to the western plains for cattle grazing. This vast area had already demonstrated its ability to sustain large, healthy populations of ungulates.
A Way of Life
Western settlers were threatened by the nomadic ways of the Plains Indians, who for thousands of years had lived migratory lives following the great herds of buffalo. To these people, the buffalo was the ultimate companion, providing food, clothing, shelter, and nearly every other material need. As the Indians depended so much on the bison for their existence, their very religions centered on the buffalo.
“The buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we were nothing. Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, our blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through the night, alive, holy. Out of his skin we made our water bags. His flesh strengthened us, became flesh of our flesh. Not the smallest part of it was wasted. His stomach, a red-hot stone dropped in to it, became our soup kettle. His horns were our spoons, the bones our knives, our women’s awls and needles. Out of his sinews we made our bowstrings and thread. His ribs were fashioned into sleds for our children, his hoofs became rattles. His mighty skull, with the pipe leaning against it, was our sacred altar. The name of the greatest of all Sioux was Tatanka Iyotake—Sitting Bull. When you killed off the buffalo you also killed the Indian—the real, natural, “wild” Indian.”
by – John Fire Lame Deer
Tragedy Strikes
In the 1870s, more buffalo were killed than in any other decade in history. The three years of 1872, ’73, and ’74 were the worst. According to one buffalo hunter, who based his calculations on first-hand accounts and shipping records, 4.5 million buffalo were slaughtered in that three-year period alone.
“If I could learn that every buffalo in the northern herd were killed I would be glad. The destruction of this herd would do more to keep Indians quiet than anything else that could happen. Since the destruction of the southern herd, which formerly roamed from Texas to the Platte, the Indians in that section have given us no trouble. If the Secretary of the Interior will authorize me to protect all other kinds of game [other than buffalo] in the far west I will engage to do so to the best of my ability.“
by – General Phil Sheridan
Indigenous Peoples Literature 