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The bison or buffalo is believed to have originated in Eurasia and then crossed the Bering Strait land bridge that once connected the continents of Asia and North America. In prehistoric times, massive herds literally darkened the earth’s surface as they wandered and foraging. For many centuries, the buffaloes slowly migrated south until they inhabited most of the meadows of the United States. The seas of buffalo herds stretched across the horizon from Canada to Mexico and from the Pacific northwest coast of Oregon southeast to Florida.
The bison was the most numerous single species of large wild mammals on Earth and is the largest terrestrial mammal in North America since the end of the Ice Age. A male buffalo can be up to six feet tall and weigh up to 2,000 pounds.
Prior to the desecration of the American wilderness by the white man, Native Americans were dependent on buffaloes for food, clothing, and shelter. Indian culture had respect and respect for the buffalo and used the flesh, skin and bones of the beast.
In the 19th century, buffaloes were hunted almost to extinction. In the 1880s, only a few hundred magnificent creatures survived.
The main reason for the extermination of the huge herds was the profitable harvest of buffalo hides. There has been a lucrative export of buffalo hides to Europe to produce the luxurious rugs and robes so coveted by the wealthy elite. Hunting buffalo in the Old West was very often a huge commercial endeavor, involving organized teams of professional hunters, supported by a team of leathermen, gun cleaners, gun loaders, camp cooks, adventurers, blacksmiths, delivery drivers and numerous horses, mules and carts. The men were even hired to recover and rework lead bullets taken from heaps of intestines.
From 1873 to 1883, more than a thousand of these professional hunting companies operated in the United States. History says that between 50,000 and 100,000 buffaloes were killed daily, depending on the season. The buffalo hunters left behind a corpse that slowly disintegrated into gigantic piles of buffalo bones, making the prairie so white that some said it looked as if it was covered with snow even in the summer months. After the corpse decomposed, the bones of the buffaloes were harvested and shipped back east.
Many of these professional hunters, such as Buffalo Bill Cody, have killed hundreds of animals in one position and many thousands in their careers. A proud professional hunter massacred over 20,000 according to his own count. Average leather quality could fetch $ 3, and the highest (heavy winter jacket) could be sold for $ 50 in an era when a worker would be lucky enough to earn a dollar a day. Greed is a great motivator. Many people condemned the slaughter, but few did anything actively to stop the slaughter.
The extermination of the American buffalo was part of a diabolical plot by the United States government to control the American Indian population. There have been government initiatives, both at the local and federal level, to starve the Indian population of the plains by eliminating their primary food source, the buffaloes. The herds were the basis of the survival of the tribes of the plains. Without the buffaloes to feed and dress them, the Indians would have been forced to go away or starve to death.
Since the survival of the Indians relied so much on the buffalo, their religions centered around the buffalo. The mutual relationship between the Indians and the buffaloes is illustrated by the poetic words of John Fire Lame Deer:
“The buffalo gave us everything we needed. We were nothing without him. Our teepees were made of his skin. His skin was our bed, our blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, pulsating at night, alive, holy. We made our water bags out of his skin. His body strengthened us, he became the body of our body. Not even the smallest part was wasted. His stomach, thrown into it red-hot stone, became our soup cauldron. His horns were our spoons, our bones, our knives, our female awls and needles. We made our bowstrings and threads from his tendons. His ribs were shaped like sleds for our children, his hooves became rattles. His mighty skull, leaning against the pipe, was our sacred altar. The biggest Sioux of all was called Tatanka Iyotake – Sitting Bull. When you killed the buffalo, you also killed an Indian – a real, natural, “wild” Indian.
The government also actively encouraged buffalo hunting for other reasons. The reduction in the buffalo population has allowed breeders to raise cattle without competition from other cattle. The railroad industry also wanted buffalo herds to be slaughtered or eliminated. Buffalo herds on railroad tracks can damage or derail locomotives if trains fail to stop in time. During winter storms, mass herds often took refuge in artificial cuts created by the slope of tracks winding through the prairies and hills. As a result, buffalo herds can delay a train’s run by several days and the delays are costly.
In 1884, the American bison was close to extinction and proposals were made to protect the bison. Recognizing that the pressure on the species was too great, Cody was one of the most vocal supporters of measures to save the disappearing buffalo population.
In South Dakota, the herd of James “Scotty” Phillips was one of the first buffalo reintroductions into North America. In 1899, Phillips set out to protect the species from extinction and purchased a small herd from Doug Carlin. Carlin’s son, Fred, tied five calves with a rope during the last great buffalo hunt on the Grand River in 1881 and transported them to the family ranch on the Cheyenne River. At the time of purchase in the US, there were approximately 7 pure buffalo left.
At the time of his death in 1911, at the age of 53, Phillips had expanded the herd to about 1,000 to 1,200. Several other herds also arose from the 5 calves rescued in Grand River.
At the same time, two Montana farmers, Charles Allard and Michel Pablo, invested over 20 years in amassing one of the largest collections of purebred bison on the continent. At the time of Allard’s death in 1896, the herd numbered 300. In 1907, after the US government refused to purchase a herd of bison, Pablo made an agreement with the Canadian government to ship most of his herd north to the newly built E?k. Islands National Park.
The current US bison population has recovered sharply and is estimated at 350,000, compared with 75 to 100 million in the mid-nineteenth century. However, most of the current herds are genetically contaminated or partially crossed with cattle. Currently there are only four genetically unmixed and only one brucellia free herds; is located in South Dakota’s Wind Cave National Park. A founding population of 16 of the Wind Cave herd was recently established in Montana by the American Prairie Association.
The only permanently wild herd of buffaloes in America is located in Yellowstone National Park. The herd of approximately 3,500 is a direct descendant of the 23 buffaloes that survived mass extermination in the 19th century, hiding in the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone Park.
Yellowstone Park’s buffaloes descended from time to time to the lower elevations outside the park in search of winter forage. The presence of wild buffaloes outside the park is viewed as a threat by many cattle farmers who fear that a small percentage of brucellosis-bearing bison will contaminate their livestock and cause their cows to be miscarried. However, there has never been any documented transmission of brucellosis to cattle from wild bison. The controversy that began in the early 1980s continues to this day. Advocacy groups say the Yellowstone stock should be protected as a separate segment of the population under the Endangered Species Act.
In Montana, where public herds require slaughter to control the target bison population, hunting resumed in 2005.
Buffaloes live in the wild for 15 to 20 years, although life expectancy depends on local predators, hunting pressures, and natural disasters. It is known that wisents live in captivity for up to 40 years.
The bison remains an icon of American culture, but our treatment of this majestic animal so far is disgraceful. We hope to carefully consider how to ensure an ecological future for buffaloes and all the wild creatures that still inhabit our precious planet.
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Source by Marlene Affeld