Destruction of the Bison on the Great Plains
The Destruction of the American Bison on the Great Plains The destruction of the American bison on the Great Plains is one of the most studied and well-known occurrences in American history. The bison, the largest native icon in America, standing 5 ˝ to 6 ˝ at the shoulder, stretching eight to ten feet long, and weighing anywhere from 1400-2200 lbs., was a staple asset to the Plains Indians, supplied white settlers with food, and is viewed by most as the symbol of the Great American West. Until the mid 19th century, the bison had dominated the plains in astounding numbers. ... More recent and accurate estimates were calculated on the basis of the number of cattle, horses, and other grazers that can survive on the plains. ... It is hard to tell exactly how many actually inhabited the plains, as there are thousands of varying estimates, with no way to evidence any. One point that is agreed on by everyone though is that the plains were full of bison in the 1820s and 30s, while by the 1870s they were nearly gone. What could cause such a rapid decline in such a dominant species on the plains? To fully understand the bison decline here in Nebraska, one must view the entire Great Plains region, as the bison were not limited strictly to our borders. But, one must also understand that the majority of the bison’s main range was here in Nebraska, and their decline most likely hurt the inhabitants of the present-day state more than anywhere else. ... Reports from many early travelers, such as Thomas Farnham, told of bison herds stretching for as long as three days covering an estimated 1,350 square miles. ... Edwin James wrote of bison so dense that his men “could stand on a hill and watch their own scent as it blew across the carpeting of animals”. The first obvious and documented evidence of the decline of the bison population may have come as early as 1842, when John Charles Fremont saw that the Lakota on the upper Platte were experiencing a rapid decline in the numbers of roaming bison. ... Their trail led directly through the bison’s main habitat, obviously affecting the herds a great deal. Many of the white settlers viewed the bison as trophies, killing them in great numbers for food, their hides, tongues, and anything that could incur a profit. They slaughtered the bison in horrific numbers, many times killing too many to use. Most of the blame placed on the white hunters occurred during “The Great Hunt” from the 1860s to the 1880s, when demand for meat was accelerated by railroad construction crews, sportsmen began to turn their focus towards the bison, and commercial hunters began to realize the demand by the industrial market for more and more hides. The southern bison hunts peaked between 1872 and 1874; with nearly 4,374,000 being killed by hide hunters per year, added to the 1,215,000 bison being killed by the Indians, as well as a smaller amount being killed by settlers and sportsmen. But, many see that the bison numbers were actually falling greatly well before this time, as seen above by Fremont and Bidwell. When studied more in depth, there is no way that settlers could have solely reduced the bison numbers the way that they were initially thought to have. Overland migrants during one of the busiest years of traffic, 1850, would have had to have killed anywhere from three to six bison for every man, woman and child simply to reduce the numbers by even five percent. Just before, during 1845 and 1846, every person, including children and women, would had to have killed a bison approximately every ten miles from Fort Kearny to Independence Rock Another way that the advancing Easterners were affecting the bison was that they were disrupting their migration patterns. As the long columns of wagons cut their way through the plains, mainly along the Platte and Arkansas River valleys, the bison were scared away from their general grazing areas. ... These livestock grazed the area year round, and cut a large swath of the bison’s grazing grasses down to nothing for as far as twenty miles on each side of the Platte in areas. As the bison roamed about the plains, they could not survive for forty miles without sufficient grasses to support the immense herds. ... The general impression of the bison and Indian suppression was that of whites pushing them further and further westward as they stormed into the region.