slaughter, precipitated by Nineteenth Century world views
and conditions, is seen as a closed chapter in the history
of the West. It is viewed from the standpoint of the Twentieth
Century as a necessary but somewhat regrettable evil. Most
of all, it is considered a completed event, something that
had to be done once and for all. The Indians were put on reservations,
the bison on ranches; end of story. Or is it?
This struggle, between white and Indian, between cattle and
bison, between two strikingly dissimilar ways of life, is
alive and strong today. The extirpation of the herds in the
last century and the current slaughter taking place outside
Yellowstone National Park are closely related and fueled by
many of the same economic motivations, personal fears, and
misunderstandings. The bison were exterminated as a means
of creating and maintaining the dominance of the cattle culture
across the Great Plains and the West. On the eve of the Twenty-first
Century, many of the same forces are still in place.
once ranged from the eastern seaboard to Oregon and California;
from Great Slave Lake in northern Alberta to northern Mexico.
Although no one will ever know exactly how many bison once
inhabited North America, estimates range from twenty-five
to seventy million. William Hornaday, a naturalist who spent
considerable time in the West, both before and during the
most severe years of the slaughter, comments on the seemingly
infinite bison population and the impossibility of estimating
would have been as easy to count or to estimate the number
of leaves in a forest as to calculate the number of buffaloes
living at any given time during the history of the species
previous to 1870 (quoted in Rifkin, 74).
great herds were not decimated overnight. The slaughter was
a gradual process, reaching full momentum in the 1870s. It
started with the Indians, who had relied upon and hunted buffalo
for thousands of years. Without the arrival of the whites--and
with them the gun, the horse, and the market for bison--the
Indians probably could have lived in perpetuity with the bison.
But with horse and gun--which plains tribes received from
their southern neighbors who, in turn, received them from
the Spanish--the Indians were able to kill buffalo with greater
ease. As the market for buffalo, particularly their hides,
emerged in the 1820s, the bison population began to decline.
In the years following the Civil War demand for beef, hides,
and tallow skyrocketed as the North began to rebuild its economy
and expand its industrial base. (This increased emphasis on
industrialization simultaneously increased demand for buffalo
hides, which provided a strong yet elastic material from which
to make belts to drive machinery.) The growing middle and
upper classes had a nearly insatiable appetite for beef, and
the postwar economic boom gave them the buying power to satisfy
it. Texas alone could not feed the demand. In response ranchers
turned to the western plains, a vast area that had already
demonstrated its ability to sustain large and healthy populations
But first, the plains' inhabitants--the Indian and the buffalo--had
to be removed . This fit in well with the U.S. government's
agenda of "civilizing" or assimilating the Indians.
Their nomadic way of life, dictated by the migrations of buffalo,
deer, and elk, did not lend itself to the European notion
of private property ownership and flew in the face of white
attempts to fence and segregate tracts of land for individual
use. Cattlemen formed alliances with the U.S. Army, the railroads,
and eastern bankers to rid the western range of both the buffalo
and the Indian (Rifkin, 73).
The establishment of reservations was an attempt to tame the
Indians of their nomadism and to establish clear boundaries
between Indian and non-Indian lands. Some treaties "protected"
the Indian's right to hunt buffalo in perpetuity, so long
as the buffalo remained.
Western settlers were threatened by the nomadic ways of the
plains Indians, who for thousands of years had lived migratory
lives following the great herds of buffalo. To these people,
the buffalo was the ultimate resource. It provided not only
food, clothing, and shelter but nearly every material need.
Because the Indians of the plains depended so much on the
bison for their existence, their very religions were centered
around the buffalo. This interdependence between Indian and
buffalo is exemplified in the beautiful words of John Fire
buffalo gave us everything we needed. Without it we were nothing.
Our tipis were made of his skin. His hide was our bed, our
blanket, our winter coat. It was our drum, throbbing through
the night, alive, holy. Out of his skin we made our water
bags. His flesh strengthened us, became flesh of our flesh.
Not the smallest part of it was wasted. His stomach, a red-hot
stone dropped into it, became our soup kettle. His horns were
our spoons, the bones our knives, our women's awls and needles.
Out of his sinews we made our bowstrings and thread. His ribs
were fashioned into sleds for our children, his hoofs became
rattles. His mighty skull, with the pipe leaning against it,
was our sacred altar. The name of the greatest of all Sioux
was Tatanka Iyotake--Sitting Bull. When you killed off the
buffalo you also killed the Indian--the real, natural, "wild"
Indian (Fire, 130). (See also Traditional
Use of the Bison from the National Bison Association)
the 1870s, more buffalo were killed than in any other decade
in history. The three years of 1872, '73, and '74 were the
worst. According to one buffalo hunter, who based his calculations
on first-hand accounts and shipping records, 4.5 million buffalo
were slaughtered in that three year period alone (Mayer, 87).
Influenced by forces discussed above, the U.S. government
pursued a policy to eradicate the buffalo and thereby extinguish
the Indians' very sustenance, forcing them onto reservations.
The following speech, recounted by John Cook--a buffalo hunter,
was delivered by General Phil Sheridan to the Texas legislature
in 1875. The legislature, as the story goes, was discussing
a bill to protect the buffalo when the General took the floor
men have done more in the last two years, and will do more
in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than
the entire regular army has done in the last forty years.
They are destroying the Indians' commissary. And it is a well
known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed
at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you
will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell
until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can
be covered with speckled cattle (Cook, 164).
testimony, spoken by an Army leader in the Indian wars, spells
it out: The buffalo and the Indian were obstructing the march
of civilization. Kill the buffalo and not only would the Indian
wars be won, but the vast tracks of public land would be opened
about Native American involvement?
FAQ- How can
Native American Tribes help the Bison?
Valley and the Great Flood
"I have heard it told on the Cheyenne Reservation in
Montana and the Seminole camps in the Florida Everglades,
I have heard it from the Eskimos north of the Arctic Circle
and the Indians south of the equator. The legend of the flood
is the most universal of all legends. It is told in Asia,
Africa, and Europe, in North America and the South Pacific."
Professor Hap Gilliland of Eastern Montana College was the
first to record this legend of the great flood. This is one
of the fifteen legends of the flood that he himself recorded
in various parts of the world:
He was an old Indian. His face was weather beaten, but his
eyes were still bright. I never knew what tribe he was from,
though I could guess. Yet others from the tribe whom I talked
to later had never heard his story.
We had been talking of the visions of the young men. He sat
for a long time, looking out across the Yellowstone Valley
through the pouring rain, before he spoke. "They are
beginning to come back," he said.
"Who is coming back?" I asked.
"The animals," he said. "It has happened before."
"Tell me about it.'
He thought for a long while before he lifted his hands and
his eyes. "The Great Spirit smiled on this land when
he made it. There were mountains and plains, forests and grasslands.
There were animals of many kinds--and men."
The old man's hands moved smoothly, telling the story more
clearly than his voice.
The Great Spirit told the people, "These animals are
your brothers. Share the land with them. They will give you
food and clothing. Live with them and protect them.
"Protect especially the buffalo, for the buffalo will
give you food and shelter. The hide of the buffalo will keep
you from the cold, from the heat, and from the rain. As long
as you have the buffalo, you will never need to suffer."
For many winters the people lived at peace with the animals
and with the land. When they killed a buffalo, they thanked
the Great Spirit, and they used every part of the buffalo.
It took care of every need.
Then other people came. They did not think of the animals
as brothers. They killed, even when they did not need food.
They burned and cut the forests, and the animals died. They
shot the buffalo and called it sport. They killed the fish
in the streams.
When the Great Spirit looked down, he was sad. He let the
smoke of the fires lie in the valleys. The people coughed
and choked. But still they burned and they killed.
So the Great Spirit sent rains to put out the fires and to
destroy the people.
The rains feil, and the waters rose. The people moved from
the flooded valleys to the higher land.Spotted Bear, the medicine
man, gathered together his people. He said to them, "The
Great Spirit has told us that as long as we have the buffalo
we will be safe from heat and cold and rain. But there are
no longer any buffalo. Unless we can find buffalo and live
at peace with nature, we will all die."
Still the rains fell, and the waters rose. The people moved
from the flooded plains to the hills.
The young men went out and hunted for the buffalo. As they
went they put out the fires. They made friends with the animals
once more. They cleaned out the streams.
Still the rains fell, and the waters rose. The people moved
from the flooded hills to the mountains.Two young men came
to Spotted Bear. "We have found the buffalo," they
"There was a cow, a calf, and a great white bull. The
cow and the calf climbed up to the safety of the mountains.
They should be back when the rain stops. But the bank gave
way, and the bull was swept away by the floodwaters. We followed
and got him to shore, but he had drowned. We have brought
you his hide."
They unfolded a huge white buffalo skin.
Spotted Bear took the white buffalo hide. "Many people
have been drowned," he said. "Our food has been
carried away. But our young people are no longer destroying
the world that was created for them. They have found the white
buffalo. It will save those who are left."
Still the rains fell, and the waters rose. The people moved
from the flooded mountains to the highest peaks.
Spotted Bear spread the white buffalo skin on the ground.
He and the other medicine men scraped it and stretched it,
and scraped it and stretched it.
Still the rains fell. Like all rawhide, the buffalo skin stretched
when it was wet. Spotted Bear stretched it out over the village.
All the people who were left crowded under it.
As the rains fell, the medicine men stretched the buffalo
skin across the mountains. Each day they stretched it farther.
Then Spotted Bear tied one corner to the top of the Big Horn
Mountains. That side, he fastened to the Pryors. The next
corner he tied to the Bear Tooth Mountains. Crossing the Yellowstone
Valley, he tied one corner to the Crazy Mountains, and the
other to Signal Butte in the Bull Mountains.
The whole Yellowstone Valley was covered by the white buffalo
skin. Though the rains still fell above, it did not fall in
the Yellowstone Valley.
The waters sank away. Animals from the outside moved into
the valley, under the white buffalo skin. The people shared
the valley with them.
Still the rains fell above the buffalo skin. The skin stretched
and began to sag.
Spotted Bear stood on the Bridger Mountains and raised the
west end of the buffalo skin to catch the West Wind. The West
Wind rushed in and was caught under the buffalo skin. The
wind lifted the skin until it formed a great dome over the
The Great Spirit saw that the people were living at peace
with the earth. The rains stopped, and the sun shone. As the
sun shone on the white buffalo skin, it gleamed with colours
of red and yellow and blue.
As the sun shone on the rawhide, it began to shrink. The ends
of the dome shrank away until all that was left was one great
arch across the valley.
The old man's voice faded away; but his hands said "Look,"
and his arms moved toward the valley.
The rain had stopped and a rainbow arched across the Yellowstone
Valley. A buffalo calf and its mother grazed beneath it.