The,Extermination,American,Buf education The Extermination Of The American Buffalo

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It is believed that bison, or buffalo, originated in Eurasia thencrossed over the Bering Strait land bridge that at one time connectedthe Asian and North American continents. In prehistoric times themassive herds literally darkened the face of the earth as they roamedand foraged. Over many centuries the buffalo slowly migrated southwarduntil they inhabited much of the grasslands of the United States. Seasof buffalo herds stretched across the horizon from Canada to Mexico andfrom the northwestern Pacific coast in Oregon southeast as far asFlorida.Bison were the most numerous single species of large wild mammals onEarth and is the largest land mammal in North America since the end ofthe Ice Age. A male buffalo may stand as high as six feet and weigh upto 2,000 pounds.Prior to the white man’s desecration of the American wilderness,Native Americans depended on the buffalo for food, clothing andshelter. Indian culture had a reverence and respect for the buffalo andused the meat, hide and bones of the beast.The major reason for the extermination of the giant herds was theprofitable harvesting of buffalo hides. There was a lucrative exporttrade to Europe of buffalo hides to make the luxurious rugs and robesso coveted by the wealthy elite. Old West buffalo hunting was veryoften a massive commercial enterprise, involving organized teams ofprofessional hunters, backed by a team of skinners, gun cleaners,re-loaders, camp cooks, wranglers, blacksmiths, teamsters and numeroushorses, mules and wagons. Men were even employed to reclaim and recastlead bullets taken from the gut piles.From 1873-83 there were over a thousand of these professionalhunting companies operating in the United States. History records thatas many as 50,000 - 100,000 buffalo were executed per day, dependent onthe season. The buffalo hunters left behind carcasses that slowlydecayed into giant piles of buffalo bones, making the prairie so whitesome said it looked as if it were covered in snow even during thesummer months. After the carcasses decayed, the buffalo bones werecollected and shipped back east.Many of these professional hunters, such as Buffalo Bill Cody,slaughtered hundreds of animals at a single stand and many thousands intheir career. One proud professional hunter massacred over 20,000 byhis own count. An average quality hide could bring $3 and a prime one(the heavy winter coat) could sell for $50 in an era when a laborerwould be fortunate to earn a dollar a day. Greed is a great motivator.Many people denounced the slaughter but few did anything actively tostop the carnage.The extermination of the American Buffalo was part of a diabolicalplot by the United States Government to control the American Indianpopulation. There were government initiatives, at both the local andfederal level, to starve the population of the Plains Indians byeliminating their main food source, the buffalo. The herds were thebasis of the survival of the Plains tribes. Without buffalo to feed andclothe them, the Indians would be forced to leave or starve to death.Because the Indians depended so much on the buffalo for theirsurvival, their very religions were centered around the buffalo. Theinterdependence between Indian and buffalo is exemplified in the poeticwords of John Fire Lame Deer:“The buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we werenothing. Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, ourblanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through the night,alive, holy. Out of his skin we made our water bags. His fleshstrengthened us, became flesh of our flesh. Not the smallest part of itwas wasted. His stomach, a red-hot stone dropped into it, became oursoup kettle. His horns were our spoons, the bones our knives, ourwomen's awls and needles. Out of his sinews we made our bowstrings andthread. His ribs were fashioned into sleds for our children, his hoofsbecame rattles. His mighty skull, with the pipe leaning against it, wasour sacred altar. The name of the greatest of all Sioux was TatankaIyotake--Sitting Bull. When you killed off the buffalo you also killedthe Indian--the real, natural, "wild" Indian".The government also actively encouraged buffalo hunting for otherreasons. A reduction in the buffalo population allowed ranchers torange their cattle without competition from other bovines. The railroadindustry also wanted buffalo herds culled or eliminated. Herds ofbuffalo on the railroad tracks could damage or derail locomotives whenthe trains failed to stop in time. During winter storms, the massiveherds often sought shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the gradeof the tracks winding though the prairies and hills. As a result,buffalo herds could delay a train’s passage for several days and delayscost money.By 1884, the American Buffalo was close to extinction and proposalswere put forth to protect the buffalo. Recognizing the pressure on thespecies was too great, Cody was one of the most vocal proponents ofmeasures to save the waning buffalo population.In South Dakota, the herd of James “Scotty” Phillips was one of theearliest reintro-ductions of buffalo to North America. In 1899,Phillips had a goal to preserve the species from extinction andpurchased a small herd from Doug Carlin. Carlin’s son Fred had roped 5calves in the Last Big Buffalo Hunt on the Grand River in 1881 andtransported them to the family’s ranch on the Cheyenne River. At thetime of purchase there were approximately 7 pure buffalo left in theUnited States.At the time of his death in 1911 at 53, Phillips had developed theherd to an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 head. Several other herds were alsoestablished from the 5 calves rescued at Grand River.During that same time, two Montana ranchers, Charles Allard andMichel Pablo, invested over 20 years in assembling one of the largestcollections of purebred bison on the continent. At the time of Allard'sdeath in 1896, the herd numbered 300. In 1907, after the U.S.government declined to purchase the bison herd, Pablo entered into acontract with the Canadian government to ship the majority of his herdnorth to the newly built Elk Island National Park.The present American Buffalo population has rebounded rapidly and isestimated at 350,000, compared to an estimated 75 to 100 million in themid-19th century. However, most of the current herds are geneticallypolluted or partly crossbred with cattle. Presently there are only fourgenetically unmixed herds and only one that is also free ofbrucellious; it resides in the Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.A founder population of 16 animals from the Wind Cave herd was recentlyestablished in Montana by the American Prairie Association.The only continuously wild buffalo herd in America is located withinYellowstone National Park. Numbering about 3,500, this herd is directlydescended from a remnant population of 23 individual buffalo thatsurvived the mass annihilation of the 1800s by hiding out in thePelican Valley of Yellowstone Park.The buffalo of Yellowstone Park have occasionally descended to lowerelevations outside the park in search of winter forage. The presence ofwild buffalo outside the park is perceived as a threat by many cattleranchers, who fear that the small percentage of bison that carrybrucellosis will infect their livestock and cause cows to abort theircalves. However, there has never been a documented case of brucellosisbeing transmitted to cattle from wild bison. The controversy that beganin the early 1980s continues to this day. Advocacy groups argue thatthe Yellowstone herd should be protected as a distinct populationsegment under the Endangered Species Act.In Montana, where public herds require culling to control the target bison population, hunting was re-established in 2005.Buffalo live 15 to 20 years in the wild, although the averagelifespan depends on local predators, hunting pressures and naturaldisasters. Bison have been known to live up to 40 years in captivity.The bison remains an icon of American culture, however our pasttreatment of this majestic animal is shameful. Hopefully we willcarefully consider how to ensure an ecological future for the buffaloand all the wild creatures that still inhabit our precious planet.