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Haunting photos of the bison extermination in 19th century America
- grantpitt 2y ago> "By the 1880s, their numbers had plummeted from around 30 million to a mere 325" I thought that must've been a typo upon first reading. Even 325,000 would be shocking. Amazing that the conservation efforts seem to have worked well.
- littlestymaar 2y agoIt hasn't worked perfectly though, as the vaste majority of American bisons (all but 4 herds in fact) aren't true bisons but have cattle genes due to hybridation.
- hasmanean 2y agoNow the USA has 87 million cattle. Private cattle ranches could never have competed with 30 million bison owned by nature, free for anyone to take.
- cryptonector 2y agoMany ranches raise bison. And even deer. Just because the population was wild then wouldn't have precluded ranching bison, or even cows.
- hasmanean 2y agoHow to you make a fenced off ranch when 30 million buffalo decide to stampede through?
- littlestymaar 2y agoYou wrote it by yourself: you fence it off!
- hasmanean 2y agoAnd how does a stampeding herd coordinate to move around a fence? Buffalo will run off a cliff in the hundreds because those in the back can’t see what’s in the front.
- defrost 2y agoOr because they've been driven from the rear and prompted by by a lead decoy to run toward a natural Ha-Ha, a drop hidden by the curve of the land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha There are second hand accounts from indigenous people, excavated bone sites with tools and spear tips, but reportedly no first hand recorded observations from Europeans of buffalo running off cliffs.
- littlestymaar 2y agoBuffaloes aren't exactly Main Battle Tanks you know: it's not that difficult to build fences that are able to stop them (it just won't be the light fences you have in mind). Also, not voluntarily pushing the beasts to your fences is going to help a bit, since buffaloes don't run to cliff on their own…
- shmageggy 2y agoThe latest Ken Burns documenatary, "The American Buffalo" tells the story of the near-total extermination of the Bison, and by extension, the Native American Indian way of life, and includes many of these photos. I felt like it was a better presentation of the reality of the West in 3 hours than the 8-episode "The West" from the 1990s, which only spent a scant few minutes on the Bison. Highly recommended.
- bpiche 2y agoDidn’t realize it just came out. Shameless plug... Been loving the PBS subscription lately. Only streaming service I use anymore. It’s like the anti-Netflix. Nova, Secrets of the Dead, Ken Burns… vs Love Island and Is It Cake?
- lunatuna 2y agoInteresting in the article they discuss how the introduction of the horse created a broader dependency on bison and more vulnerable by its availability. Ultimately though, smallpox is what did the most damage across N. America. Haida Gwaii for example went from something like 40,000 people to 400.
- bikenaga 2y agoThere's a book based on the documentary: "Blood Memory" by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns. Beautiful pictures, good narrative - maybe a little pricey at $40 for the HB.
- johnea 2y ago> The arrival of horses, originally brought by the Spanish, revolutionized hunting techniques. By the early 1700s, horses had become integral to the nomadic hunting cultures of Indigenous groups. ... > Attracted by previously unimagined hunting possibilities, Native Americans poured into the Plains from all directions, creating one of most renowned hunting cultures in history. Does the author mean to imply that the plains were unihabited until the spanish introduction of horses?
- wil421 2y agoNo but they flourished post Horse. The horse was like a technology that enabled the Indians to expand and flourish in the plains. https://www.history.com/news/horses-plains-indians-native-americans https://www.history.com/news/horses-plains-indians-native-am...
- trgn 2y agoButcher's crossing is a great book set against this backdrop. The pithy ending - bison fur was just really a fashion fad - is, if not the entire truth, at least very sobering.
- JohnMakin 2y agoIt has always fascinated me that the people migrating to oregon territory for the gold rush in the 1850's were some of the very very last people to ever see vast swaths of the United States in its pristine, natural state. I wonder if they had any clue that within a matter of a few decades it'd basically all be gone.
- samatman 2y agoReferring to land the natives had inhabited for something like 15,000 years as "pristine" and "natural" is somewhat erasing their accomplishments, no? Pristine and natural North America had mammoth, horses, and many other megafauna which were rapidly hunted to extinction. But somehow the American Indian evolved culturally, adapting to their environmental niches and cultivating the land to maintain a lifestyle dominated by hunting, with some farming. This involved more-or-less extensive changes to the landscape. America before the White man came wasn't pristine or natural. It was bountiful.
- JohnMakin 2y ago> Referring to land the natives had inhabited for something like 15,000 years as "pristine" and "natural" is somewhat erasing their accomplishments, no? Erm, no? Seems kind of racist to say otherwise? The plains indians entire culture revolved around preserving and respecting nature. And I'm pretty sure it's only theorized that the paleo-indians wiped out the mammoths, and I'm not sure how that's the problem of the white man or even the native americans of the mid 19th century. Extending your argument to its logical absurdity, no environment can be considered "pristine" unless it's the literal primordial sludge the first life emerged from. Very odd nitpickery.
- vundercind 2y agoThey’d heavily managed the land, especially through intentional burning, for a very long time. That would have shaped entire ecosystems.
- bequanna 2y ago
- throwaway74432 2y ago[flagged]
- huytersd 2y agoI don’t know, killing all but a handful of 30 million wild animals is pretty damn evil. Especially since they just killed them and left them to rot.
- throwaway74432 2y agoThat's the power of only seeing one story, minus context of what the rest of the world was like. Would you also call the history of what native american tribes did to each other evil? Or was it on par with the brutality of the times?
- causal 2y agoI don't think you are arguing in good faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
- throwaway74432 2y agoYou're misusing that fallacy here, but I don't fault you, because my point is subtle. My claim isn't that their point is invalid because they're hypocritical about native american history, my claim is that their gauge of evil is miscalibrated, because only a certain perspective of history is amplified to this degree, minus the historical context that puts it on par with the times.
- huytersd 2y agoThey did regular brutality. Attack another tribe, kill like 5% of them, rape etc. everyone did that. No one really wiped out entire species.
- throwaway74432 2y ago
- sudden_dystopia 2y agoJust imagine those bison’s carbon footprint.
- hasmanean 2y agoActually the grasslands of the Great Plains had immense amounts of carbon sequestered in their roots which extended several feet down. Buffalo, by grazing and fertilizing, helped the grass.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago“General Sherman remarked, in conversation the other day, that the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins.” Oof. I didn't know that was Sherman's take on it.
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoAlmost makes it sound like if Horses alone were introduced, but no other white man colonization, that the Indians might have wiped out the buffalo also, if left to their own devices. Wouldn't this be more in line with other megafauna extinctions? The only reason Indians didn't also wipe out this megafauna was a technology change, the addition of horses.
- cryptonector 2y agoThe addition of agriculture would also have meant the raising of bison much as cows.
- Curzel 2y agoMy head is blowing up rn trying to understand if they are real pictures
- toss1 2y agoThe money quote, describing the root driver of the extermination — it was a policy to exterminate the primary source of sustenance for the Native Americans, to force them onto the reservations. The economic uses and mass hunting competitions were the result. >>The federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, primarily to pressure the native people onto the Indian reservations during times of conflict by removing their main food source. >>Without the bison, native people of the plains were often forced to leave the land or starve to death. One of the biggest advocates of this strategy was General William Tecumseh Sherman. >>On June 26, 1869, the Army Navy Journal reported: “General Sherman remarked, in conversation the other day, that the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins.”
- not_the_fda 2y agoI recently read "The Once and Future World; Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be" and basically everything think as nature is an illusion. We humans have decimated every species on the planet. The planet used to be teaming with wildlife, now its mostly empty and quiet except for the humans.
- sandspar 2y agoBe aware that a book like this is selling you something. It's biased. It's going to paint a one-sided picture that best supports its case.
- hermitcrab 2y agoHard to read this article and feel proud to be a human. A world without wilderness and wild animal will be an impoverished one indeed. "The total weight of Earth’s wild land mammals – from elephants to bisons and from deer to tigers – is now less than 10% of the combined tonnage of men, women and children living on the planet." https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/18/a-wake-up-call-total-weight-of-wild-mammals-less-than-10-of-humanitys https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/18/a-wake-u... However the bison numbers have recovered somewhat. Great whale populations are increasing. Maybe there is some hope for us yet.
- cryptonector 2y agoAmerican governments -Federal and State- in the 19th century developed eugenics laws and genocidal policies against natives, to say nothing of horrible policies against blacks. Some of those served as inspiration to the Nazis. Horrible.
- aeternum 2y agoYou have to feel somewhat proud to have achieved such extreme evolutionary success. Only recently have we expanded to other meta goals like conservation. By the measure that we apply to nearly every other species on earth, humans win.
- jebarker 2y ago> By the measure that we apply to nearly every other species on earth, humans win. I don't understand - what measure?
- SturgeonsLaw 2y agoKickin' the most ass
- hermitcrab 2y agoEvolution is about competition. So I guess if your species destroys every other species then you have 'won' in some sense. But only in the same sense that you have 'won' a nuclear war if your counties is the only one in the world with any survivors.
- B1FF_PSUVM 2y agoThe discussion here reminded me of the Pratchett Discworld story that I least liked - and I bought and enjoyed almost all the books over the decades they were published. It was the one about the ghouls - hated and despised, until it was figured out they made beautiful music, and were warmly applauded in a crowded concert, triumphantly closing the book. Whee, close call. If they didn't have any entertainment value and just propagated diseases, that would be another story.
- meta-level 2y agoHomo Sapiens Sapiens
- leobg 2y agoIsn’t there that scene in ”Dances With Wolves” where you see hundreds of dead buffaloes all the way to the horizon?