What killed all the bison? - Andrew C. Isenberg
It was 1861, and Lone Bear was leading
Eagle Plume on his first-ever hunt.
He paused and told Eagle Plume the rules:
once he saw the bison herd, he needed
to wait until someone older signaled;
and when it came time,
to kill only what his horse could carry.
Lone Bear advanced, then beckoned,
and suddenly they were off.
Eagle Plume and Lone Bear were Kiowa,
which was one of several Indigenous groups
that lived on the Great Plains.
By the mid-1700s, many Plains nations
were using horses
to hunt the area’s plentiful bison,
North America’s largest land mammals.
They survived on bison meat,
made the bison’s summer hides into lodges,
and winter coats into blankets,
and used bison bones and horns for tools
and sinew as thread.
But in the decades to come,
millions of bison will be slaughtered,
and the Plains societies’ survival
and cultures fundamentally—
and deliberately— threatened.
After the American Civil War,
thousands of US settlers began
occupying the Plains,
intent on exploiting
its natural resources.
During the 1860s, Plains nations pushed
back against the US military.
William Sherman resented
the army’s defeats.
His ruthless military tactics had recently
helped end the American Civil War.
And, in 1869, he was appointed
the US Army’s Commanding General.
Now, his focus was on what he called
“the Indian problem.”
US government officials were determined
to force Native American people
into designated areas
they called reservations.
This way, they could
control Indigenous people
while US settlers and companies
profited off their land.
Sherman pledged to stay out west,
in his words,
“till the Indians are all killed or taken
to a country where they can be watched.”
Meanwhile, the demand for leather,
like the kind used for belting to connect
industrial machinery, boomed.
To meet the demand, US hunters
armed with rifles
killed bison all across the Plains.
Sherman and other military officials
realized they could meet
their goal passively,
by letting this lurching
industrial economy run unchecked.
Their idea was that,
if hunters depleted the bison,
Plains Indigenous peoples would be
starved into submission.
One US colonel told
a visiting British lieutenant,
“Kill every buffalo you can!
Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”
The US military refused to enforce
treaties that barred civilian hunters
from tribal territory,
and it sometimes provided hunters
with protection and ammunition.
Many hide hunters killed 50 bison a day.
During a two-month span in 1876,
one hunter killed 5,855 bison,
the near-constant firing of his rifle
leaving him deaf in one ear.
Some of the bison the hunters shot
wandered away and died.
Commonly, the hunters would only retrieve
the bison's hides and tongues,
leaving the rest to rot.
Inexperienced skinners destroyed hides
as they flayed them.
And bison carcasses that were left
were torn to pieces by other animals.
So hunters began lacing bison meat
with poison
so they could also collect wolf pelts.
Native American people protested,
and humanitarian and animal rights groups
tried to intervene
as the bison population plummeted.
Legislation that would make bison hunting
illegal in federal territories
even passed Congress in 1874—
but the US President vetoed it.
After all, the sordid strategy
was working:
many Plains nations faced starvation
and were being forced onto reservations.
Back in 1800, tens of millions of bison
swept the Great Plains.
By 1900, there were
fewer than 1,000 in existence.
Some wealthy US citizens created bison
preserves which helped save the species.
But the preserves functioned mainly
as tourist attractions,
and some of them carved even more land
off Native American reservations.
As of 2021, the bison population
had grown to around 500,000.
A vast majority live on private ranches.
In recent years, Plains nations have
reintroduced some 20,000 bison
to tribal lands.
They aim to heal and restore
the relationship
that was so flagrantly attacked
during the bison slaughter.
