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Ken Burns chronicles the sad fate of the American buffalo
- helsinkiandrew 3y agohttps://archive.ph/ZGiF7 https://archive.ph/ZGiF7
- scrollaway 3y agoThe YouTube channel Be Smart made a really touching video on the bison, their role and their fate in the US, but also their impact on the ecosystem: https://youtu.be/i8wrAkixfHc https://youtu.be/i8wrAkixfHc (First part is on the Serengeti; Bison starts at 13:55)
- jen729w 3y agoJohn Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing is an incredible story about buffalo hunters. If half of it is true it’s tragic. The sheer numbers; the depth of destruction for the profit of a hide. It boggles the mind that we did this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butcher's_Crossing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butcher's_Crossing (Off-topic, but Williams is best known for Stoner, a truly beautiful work that you should read immediately if you haven’t already.)
- block_dagger 3y agoOne of thousands of species homo sapiens has slaughtered mindlessly. We’re real special.
- II2II 3y agoFrom my understanding, it was more intentional than mindless. The article suggests that the extermination of the bison went hand in hand with the destruction of aboriginal societies. The nomadic bison were also problematic for expansion, affecting both agriculture and the railway. This was not a case of, "oh, there's money to be made off of their hides. Whoops! Where did all of the bison go." The reason why so many people take a stance against certain types of development goes well beyond unintentional consequences. It is because many of those consequences were intended to serve a particular agenda.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cyberax 3y ago> This was not a case of, "oh, there's money to be made off of their hides. Whoops! Where did all of the bison go." This actually was exactly the case. The bison population collapsed within just _two_ years (1881-1883). In 1883 hunters were waiting for the bison that never came. As for railroads, the first trans-continental railroad was finished in 1869, and smaller railroads existed before that. Here's a nice overview article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190052818300087 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019005281...
- philwelch 3y agoAs another point of reference, the last Comanche band surrendered and moved onto the reservations in 1875.
- morelisp 3y agoThis is a major section of the documentary.
- polartx 3y agoIt has always been my understanding that the near extermination of the American buffalo never had to do with over hunting. Every bit of industry during that era was centered around westward expansion. The biggest deterrent to expansion was the presence of American Indians (literally in the form of attack or sabotage of the transcontinental railroad construction, or psychological discouragement of settlers). There’s no delicate way to put it: exterminating buffalo was the safest, most cost-effective way to mitigate the American Indian threat against westward expansion. Since American Indian tribes weren’t agriculturally equipped to sustain themselves, especially through winters, reduction of buffalo along the overland expansion routes practically guaranteed the reduction of attacks against settlers and railroad workers. Hiring people to shoot buffalo was orders of magnitude easier and cheaper (and safer) than hiring and maintaining an army to fight Indians. Plus a Buffalo heards natural response to threat is either to run, or form a tight circle (you could say _that_ adaptation never counted on the invention of gunpowder). All that is to say, extinction of the buffalo was not the consequence of insatiable bloodlust for killing animals, as much as it was an objective in order to achieve unencumbered expansion and sustain the economic machine that was fueling it.
- barrenko 3y agoLove a spontaneous book rec. Thanks!
- echelon_musk 3y agoIf in doubt, this picture is a clear piece of evidence: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Bison_skull_pile_edit_2.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Bison_sk...
- cyberax 3y ago[flagged]
- PretzelPirate 3y agoThe numbers don't seem large at all compared to how many animals we slaughter per year for meat. Just like the buffalo hide, we don't need that meat to survive, it's a luxury.
- acdanger 3y agoAlso made into a 2022 movie starring Nicholas Cage.
- idontwantthis 3y agoIt was a deliberate act of genocide not just for profit. Read Empire of the Summer Moon to learn about why the Middle of North America was largely unsettled by Europeans for 350 years.
- cyberax 3y ago> Middle of North America was largely unsettled by Europeans for 350 years. Easy. Why would you settle there when a much better Eastern coast is available? The US non-Native population in 1800 was less than 6 million. For comparison, the UK was 10 million according to the 1801 census.
- idontwantthis 3y agoI mean sure. Or you can look up a really interesting feature of American history that is not widely known. The Comanche Empire commanded an incredible amount of space with only 10s of thousands of people.
- cyberax 3y agoIt's pretty widely known. But what does it have to do with the question from the grandposter?
- cyberax 3y agoA general rule, when you find a "beautiful work", it usually is trying to sell you a story that seriously lacks in historical detail. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Regarding bison, it's likely that the final blow was not from overhunting, but from habitat encroachment that constrained their migratory patterns. This in turn started an epidemic of tick-borne disease, that resulted in a total collapse of their population within just 2 years (1881-1883). There's a really nice overview article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190052818300087 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019005281...
- Mistletoe 3y agoStoner is a fictional campus novel about a college professor…all beautiful works aren’t aiming for historical detail.
- zdragnar 3y agoFiction requires a suspension of disbelief- that a certain person is real, or that certain things have happened, etc. Good fiction asks its audience to accept things that don't require special knowledge. Bad (historical) fiction presents false things in such a way that the audience accepts them without realizing that is is part of the fictional narrative, because they lack the specialized knowledge to understand when artistic liberties have been taken. Since the audience is already in a state of suspended disbelief, they aren't prepared to be skeptical of what is presented as real but is not. I have a similar quibble with American Gods. Several times I've seen people parrot ideas from the story that sounded like one of many historical facts but were actually very wrong, such as the background of Easter. Edit: I may have been overly harsh with the use of the word "Bad". They're good stories in their own rights, but this particular bone has been stuck in my craw for a long time.
- AlbertCory 3y agoStoner is a great book. It's not "historical fiction".
- morelisp 3y ago"Overhunting" vs. "undermanagement" feels like a distinction without a difference outside a small circle of purely scientific inquiry.
- billfruit 3y agoAlso recommend Francis Parkman's, "Oregon Trail", such a life of adventure combined with the ability to turn out sublime prose. A better record of the time than any video footage could ever have achieved.
- therealdrag0 3y agoI’ve been thinking about rereading Stoner. Read it a few years ago and loved it.
- ZunarJ5 3y agoThis podcast changed my life trajectory, it's about how the conservation movement got started: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/wild-ones-live/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/wild-ones-live/
- therealdrag0 3y agoLove a good specific episode recommendation. I subscribe to 99pi but didn’t back then so I’ll check it out.
- ZunarJ5 3y agoHonestly, I bawled my eyes out on this one and read the associated book. The book is a great, fast, fun read. Cannot recommend it enough.
- williamcotton 3y agoI mean, four straight losses in the Super Bowl? The Music City Miracle? 13 Seconds? A sad fate indeed for America’s Buffalo.
- williamcotton 3y agoEvery pun has the possibility of being a fatal mistake!
- svnt 3y agoCalling that a pun is generous.
- williamcotton 3y agoSo I’ve taken “the sad fate of the American Buffalo”, and replaced the animal with the city to get “the sad fate of America’s Buffalo”. Then I needed the exposition of that sad fate. The mistake is probably in using an NFL reference. It is indeed a pun but I make no claims that it is a good pun!
- mkoubaa 3y agohttps://americanprairie.org https://americanprairie.org a nonprofit that is buying land to bring back the prairie ecosystem
- culturestate 3y agoTed Turner (of CNN/Turner Broadcasting/blood feud with George Steinbrenner fame) has also been doing this for decades[1], with bringing back bison as a primary focus. He’s one of the largest private landowners in America with a couple of million acres and tens of thousands of bison. 1. https://www.tedturner.com/turner-ranches/ https://www.tedturner.com/turner-ranches/
- boomboomsubban 3y agoSomething about "we need your money to keep northeast Montana empty" seems fishy. I've seen a fair amount of the northern great plains, and they seem to be empty already.
- klyrs 3y agoIf they weren't empty, you couldn't keep them empty.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoYou're right, the semantics of it work out fine. I don't think they need our money to remain empty.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago"Buffalo looks even better in gold [1 oz US coin]". —Some investment banker, probably. "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a brief moment in time we created a lot of share-holder value." —New Yorker (cartoon)
- pard68 3y agoFor some reason a lot of documentaries or books on bison neglect to mention that these herd animals had a presence in ever US state except Hawaii. Have not seen this new film, maybe this is mentioned there.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoWhat a long article to explain what could have been summarized in one phrase: "Kill every buffalo you can. Every dead buffalo is a dead Indian" That was the de-facto policy of the US on the American bison. An explicit policy of animal extermination to achieve human extermination. A policy that would later inspire the most horrible events of the 20th century. The reason you don't know many Native Americans today, and most people you know either come from Europe, Africa or Asia but not here. Everything else is revisionism, obfuscation, dillution of important events in oceans of irrelevant text, and waste of time. Bisons were killed and their bones were processed into fertilizer.
- mylittlebrain 3y agoIs this view documented anywhere?
- 29athrowaway 3y agoDocumented every time you go outside and noone looks Native American in a continent where 100% of the population was once Native American. And where bisons were so numerous that roamed the land lifting so much dust that the sky turned dark.
- therealdrag0 3y agoThat’s poor reasoning there’s many things that reduced native populations. You can’t just pick one and claim it’s the most important without evidence.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoThere were a lot of bison. There were a lot of natives. The European outsiders all but eliminated both. No guilt. No respirations. What more do we need to know?
- therealdrag0 3y ago
- williamcotton 3y agoWell at least the Bison outlived the Yacc.
- williamcotton 3y agoI’m going for broke!
- ethbr1 3y agoIf you're interested in streaming, here's PBS' "How to Watch PBS Without Cable" page: https://help.pbs.org/support/solutions/articles/12000090583-how-to-watch-pbs-without-cable https://help.pbs.org/support/solutions/articles/12000090583-... And a direct link to American Buffalo: https://www.pbs.org/show/the-american-buffalo/ https://www.pbs.org/show/the-american-buffalo/
- johnsanders 3y agoThis may be pedantic, but I'm baffled that PBS page doesn't mention every PBS station is available for free over the air.
- sidewndr46 3y agoPBS is "free to air", meaning it can be redistributed verbatim within the US with minimal delay without permission from the parent company. As a result, they have no incentive or negative incentive to advertise that other stations carry their content.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoNot so. The local PBS stations do fund raising / pledge drives. It's definitely in PBS' interest to push people to local PBS stations. Or did I misinterpret your point?
- johnsanders 3y agoContent created by PBS and its member stations carries a copyright notice and cannot be legally redistributed without permission.
- aodin 3y agoDenver, Colorado maintains two bison herds descended from the last wild North American bison. There were as few as 18 bison left in Colorado at the beginning of the 1900s. Thankfully, the conservation project has been a success and Denver has been transferring bison to Native American tribes to start additional herds. The herds are just about 30 minutes from downtown if you ever visit. More info, pictures, and video here: https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Parks-Recreation/Urban-Parks/Mountain-Parks/Bison-Conservation https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Of...
- ethbr1 3y agoThey really are majestic creatures. (albeit a bit grumpy) If anyone in the US hasn't seen one in person, I'd recommend making the effort. Much different experience than simply seeing a picture, especially if it's on open range like Yellowstone National Park. They're huge (~10' long, 6' tall). They're heavy (~1700 lbs). They're fast (~40mph, in the locomotive, once-they-get-1700lbs-going sense). And they fit perfectly in scale with the plains. (Disclaimer: Don't approach them, as they generally don't like that. And you don't want one angry at you)
- brudgers 3y agoThe bison herd of Lamar Valley in Yellowstone is regularly on the road particularly around sunset. It's an amazing traffic jam. Stay in your car of course.
- aksss 3y agoA plug for Steve Rinella's excellent book, "American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon".[0] He recounts his grueling trip in the Copper River Basin in Alaska on a hunt for a bison, and every other chapter continues a parallel telling of the history of the species in North America, particularly the archaeological evidence of prehistoric hunting of the animal, from large kill sites to fascinating sites like the Mesa site in northern Alaska[1] linking arctic cultures to Paleoindians in midcontinent. It's a really enjoyable book, and he narrates the audio book. [0] https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/0385521693 https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/... [1] https://www.blm.gov/programs/cultural-heritage-and-paleontology/archaeology/what-we-manage/alaska/mesa-site https://www.blm.gov/programs/cultural-heritage-and-paleontol...
- AlbertCory 3y agoApparently beavers aren't as good a Ken Burns story. Mostly killed to make beaver hats for Europeans rather than just wasted, it's not a purely American story, plus you can't easily see them from your car. https://www.beaverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Quabbin-Res.-Beaver-Population-Study.pdf https://www.beaverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Q... https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/downloads/beaver/baker-and-hill-beaver-chapter.pdf https://www.aphis.usda.gov/wildlife_damage/downloads/beaver/...
- Animats 3y agoBuffalo are not extinct. They are coming back, as humans leave the Great Plains.[1] If you're in the SF area, Golden Gate Park has a buffalo herd in a fenced area. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Commons
- xzdt 3y agoIf you’re interested in the history of the conservation, check out this entry on how Hornaday became a conservationist [1] and his subsequent conservation efforts. [2] Stumbled on it about a month back and thought it was pretty cool. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Temple_Hornaday#Biography https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Temple_Hornaday#Biog... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Temple_Hornaday#Wildlife_Conservation_Legacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Temple_Hornaday#Wild...
- dzonga 3y agoken burns probably has the best documentary on how ww2 had an effect on civilians in america.