Bison slaughter impact
The impact of bison slaughter in North America was profound and multifaceted, primarily occurring during the 19th century. Once numbering in the millions, bison populations plummeted to just a few thousand due to excessive hunting, government policies, and the expansion of the railroads. This drastic decline not only devastated the bison population but also severely disrupted the traditional lifestyles of the Plains Indigenous peoples, who relied on bison for food, clothing, and cultural practices. The bison was central to their nomadic way of life, symbolizing a deep spiritual connection to the land and its resources.
The mass killing of bison was spurred by both necessity and sport, with hunters often leaving carcasses to rot after taking only hides or select parts for profit. This unsustainable hunting practice was exacerbated by government involvement, which aimed to subdue Indigenous peoples by eradicating their primary resource. The slaughter, occurring primarily between the early 1870s and 1883, led to ecological imbalance and the near extinction of the species.
As the bison vanished, so too did the cultural practices tied to them, forcing many Indigenous communities to adapt to agricultural lifestyles on reservations, fundamentally altering their social structures. Today, efforts to conserve and protect bison populations exist, recognizing their historical significance and the cultural legacy of the Indigenous peoples who once thrived alongside them.
Bison slaughter impact
Significance: The mass killings of bison led to the near-extinction of the species and destroyed the lifeblood of the indigenous Great Plains nations.
In 1853, the American bison population was estimated to be between sixty and seventy million. That number was reduced to a few thousand within thirty years. The bison’s decline was the result of human greed, uncontrolled exploitation, and US government policy. Also called the American buffalo, the bison ranged throughout North America from northern Mexico to southern Canada and from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic shoreline, but its greatest concentration was on the grasslands of the Great Plains.
Bison were the basis for a total way of life for the indigenous Plains peoples, providing them with food, clothing, and shelter. An important part of the nomadic Plains tribes’ culture was the bison-hide tipi, which could be collapsed quickly when the tribe was ready to move on. On the treeless plains, the herds’ dried droppings were fuel for the cooking fires.
On the northern Great Plains, where the terrain was rugged, a herd feeding near a cliff would be driven over the precipice by men and boys wearing bison robes and shouting, an event known as a buffalo jump. The waiting tribe rushed in to butcher as many of the animals as they could. Frequently, many more animals were left dead or dying than could be handled. Contemporaneous writers described the slaughter of from two hundred to two thousand bison in such hunts. However, because of the relatively small number of indigenous peoples in North America by that time, their impact on the overall bison population was slight.
Buffalo Bill and Sport Hunting
Following the end of the American Civil War in April 1865, army troops traveled west to battle the Cheyenne, Lakota Sioux, and Crow peoples. The army contracted with local settlers to supply the troops with “buffalo beef.” Workers constructing the new transcontinental railroad also had to be fed. Contractors included William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, probably the best-recognized of all the bison killers. Hunters frequently skinned the bison, cut out the tongue, and took only some of the meat, leaving the remainder of the bison to rot on the prairie.
Dressed hides were shipped east as lap robes for winter sleigh and buggy rides or were turned into overcoats. Highly romanticized stories by eastern writers about the exploits of Buffalo Bill and other bison hunters quickly made buffalo robes a status symbol. Demand increased, and more bison were slaughtered. Often only the skin was taken, the carcass left to scavengers. Hundreds of thousands of bison were killed each year for food and hides.
Bison also were killed for sport, as it became popular for groups of people to travel to the Great Plains simply to shoot bison. The railroads that linked the East and West cut across the ancient north-south routes of the bison, and the seemingly endless herds were an annoyance to the train crews and a temptation to the passengers. When trains were delayed, passengers fired into the massed animals, killing some and wounding many more. The railroads encouraged this, with advertising to induce people to ride their trains.
It is difficult to obtain accurate data on the number of bison slaughtered. Few records were kept, and the killing took place over a wide area. In 1872, in western Kansas, approximately two thousand hide hunters were each bringing down about fifteen bison a day. At that rate, hunters were killing thirty thousand bison per day. As soon as the herds in one area were reduced beyond the point of diminishing returns, the hunters moved elsewhere, seeking larger herds. One report from 1869 notes that in a good year, about 250,000 hides were shipped to the New York market alone. Railroad shipments between 1872 and 1874 totaled 1,378,359 hides.
A peculiarity in the behavior of the bison made them easy targets for hunters. Although bison could be stampeded, hunters in ambush could pick off the animals one by one, because they simply stood as others were shot and dropped in place. Hide hunters called it a “stand.” Some of the herd nosed at their fallen comrades and then calmly joined the rest of the animals in grazing. A good hunter could kill seventy-five to one hundred bison per day. One especially skillful hunter, in a bet with his fellows and shooting at a stand from ambush, killed one hundred twenty bison in forty minutes.
The slaughter of the bison was far from a managed or controlled affair. Hunters indiscriminately shot both adults and subadults. Calves were ignored except, possibly, for camp meat. Unweaned, orphaned calves, not yet able to graze the abundant grasses, were left to starve to death.
Government Involvement
The US government took the position that the still-warring Plains tribes could be subdued if the bison were denied to them. The US Army began a program of interdiction of the herds. General Philip Henry Sheridan spoke out strongly in favor of continuing the slaughter of the buffalo “to settle the Indian question.” Sheridan’s Civil War comrade General William Tecumseh Sherman echoed these sentiments, stating that the only way to force the Plains peoples onto reservations and turn them into farmers was to clear the prairies of the bison. The government further supported the bison slaughter by providing free ammunition to any buffalo hunter on request.
Great Herds Are Gone
As early as 1873, fewer and fewer bison were encountered in western Kansas. Hide hunters moved to the northern Great Plains territories and continued the slaughter. The decline spread throughout the range of the bison, and it soon became obvious to most observers that the great herds were gone.
The intensive slaughter for hides was brief, occurring mostly from 1872 to 1874, but the activity extended from 1871 through 1883. Most herds were shot out in about four years, and the hunters then moved on to other areas. Although a few bison survived, undoubtedly the species’ numbers had slipped below the level that ecologists call the minimum viable population size. For many animals, more than one male and one female are required to begin a breeding population. The great slaughter left the prairies littered with bison skeletons. For years, farmers could gather a cartload or two of bones and sell them to processors for fertilizer. One bone buyer estimated that from 1884 to 1891, he bought the bones of approximately six million bison skeletons.
Neither the settlers nor the Plains peoples could believe that the bison was no more. The former thought that the herds had migrated to Canada and would soon return, while the latter, drawing on their mythology, believed that the animals had returned to a great cavern in the ground and would reappear if the right prayers were said and the right supplications were made. The great herds were, however, gone. The impact of the hide hunters’ indiscriminate slaughter and the US government’s interdiction policy eliminated not only the bison but also the Plains peoples’ traditional nomadic way of life. Reluctantly, but with resignation, they became farmers on reservations, as the US government had sought. Perhaps the worst blow to the various Plains nations was the loss of their religious and cultural relationship with the bison. Their civilizations and ways of life had been destroyed along with the animals on which they had depended.
Only a few scattered bison and some in private herds escaped the slaughter. Today, brought together in national parks, preserves, and other protected areas, they have survived and multiplied.
Bibliography
Brink, Jack W. Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains. Edmonton: Athabasca UP, 2008. Print.
Dary, David A. The Buffalo Book: The Full Saga of the American Animal. Rev. ed. Athens: Swallow, 1989. Print.
Foster, John, Dick Harrison, and I. S. MacLaren, eds. Buffalo. Edmonton: U of Alberta P, 1992. Print.
Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920. New York: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.
Kuiper, Kathleen, ed. American Indians of the Plateau and Plains. New York: Britannica, 2012. Print.
Matthews, Anne. Where the Buffalo Roam: Restoring America's Great Plains. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002. Print.
Russell, Don. The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1960. Print.