Bison hunting
Charles C. Mann wrote in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, pages 367 ff, "Hernando De Soto's expedition staggered through the Southeast for four years in the early 16th century and saw hordes of people but apparently didn't see a single bison."
In such a view, the seas of bison herds that stretched to the horizon were a symptom of an ecology out of balance, only rendered possible by decades of heavier-than-average rainfall.
Other evidence of the arrival circa 1550–1600 in the savannas of the eastern seaboard includes the lack of places that southeast natives named after buffalo.
[citation needed] Working on foot, a few groups of Native Americans at times used fires to channel an entire herd of buffalo over a cliff, sometimes killing far more than they could use.
desert kites), and a medicine man pointing down the line with a pair of hindquarters in his hands, the Crows drove many bison over a cliff.
Intertribal warfare forced the Cheyenne to give up their cornfields at Biesterfeldt village and eventually cross west of the Missouri and become the well-known horseback buffalo hunters.
[66] The otherwise numerous Small Robes band of the Piegan Blackfoot lost influence and some self-reliance after a severe River Crow attack on a moving camp at "Mountains on Both Sides" (Judith Gap, Montana) in 1845.
[71] In 1889, an essay in a journal of the time observed:[72] Thirty years ago millions of the great unwieldy animals existed on this continent.
Many thousands have been ruthlessly and shamefully slain every season for past twenty years or more by white hunters and tourists merely for their robes, and in sheer wanton sport, and their huge carcasses left to fester and rot, and their bleached skeletons to strew the deserts and lonely plains.Indigenous peoples whose lives depended on the Buffalo also continued to hunt, and they were faced with having to adapt to the arrival of European settlers in the Plains.
[77] 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.
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.
Similarly, Lieutenant General John M. Schofield would write in his memoirs: "With my cavalry and carbined artillery encamped in front, I wanted no other occupation in life than to ward off the savage and kill off his food until there should no longer be an Indian frontier in our beautiful country.
According to Professor David Smits: "Frustrated bluecoats, unable to deliver a punishing blow to the so-called 'Hostiles', unless they were immobilized in their winter camps, could, however, strike at a more accessible target, namely, the buffalo.
For a decade after 1873, there were several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, such commercial hide-hunting outfits harvesting bison at any one time, vastly exceeding the take by Native Americans or individual meat hunters.
[96] Hidatsa rebel Crow Flies High and his group established themselves on the Fort Buford Military Reservation, North Dakota, at the start of the 1870s and hunted bison in the Yellowstone area until the game went scarce during the next decade.
[97]: 14–15 Indian agents, with insufficient funds, accepted long hunting expeditions of the Flathead and Pend d'Oreille to the plains in the late 1870s.
The nearest buffalo herd was over two hundred miles away, and many Cheyennes began leaving the reservation, forced to hunt livestock of nearby settlers and passing wagon trains.
University of Montana anthropology professor S. Neyooxet Greymorning stated: "The creation stories of where buffalo came from put them in a very spiritual place among many tribes.
It was used in ceremonies, as well as to make tipi covers that provide homes for people, utensils, shields, weapons, and parts were used for sewing with the sinew.
[118] Notable early buffalo conservationists included: The famous herd of James "Scotty" Philip in South Dakota was one of the earliest reintroductions of bison to North America.
In 1873, Samuel Walking Coyote, a member of the Pend d'orville tribe, herded seven orphan calves along the Flathead Reservation west of the Rocky Mountain divide.
In 1907, after U.S. authorities declined to buy the herd, Pablo struck a deal with the Canadian government and shipped most of his bison northward to the newly created Elk Island National Park.
[93][120] Also, in 1907, the New York Zoological Park sent 15 bison to Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma forming the nucleus of a herd that now numbers 650.
In 1902, a captive herd of 21 plains bison was introduced to the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone and managed as livestock until the 1960s, when a policy of natural regulation was adopted by the park.
[125] Known as the "Blue Mountain Forest Association", it was a limited membership proprietary hunting club, the park for which comprised 26,000 acres, covering the townships of Cornish, Croydon, Grantham, Newport, and Plainfield.
Baynes commented: "Of all the works of the late Mr. Austin Corbin, the preservation of that herd of bison was the one that would earn his country’s deepest gratitude.
The management controversy that began in the early 1980s continues with advocacy groups arguing that the herd should be protected as a distinct population segment under the Endangered Species Act.
Founded in 1996 by Mike Mease, Sicango Lakota, and Rosalie Little Thunder, the Buffalo Field Campaign hopes to get bison migrating freely in Montana and beyond.
The Buffalo Field Campaign challenges Montana's DOL officials, who slaughtered 1631 bison in the winter of 2007-2008 in a food search away from Yellowstone National Park.
These reserves included El Uno Ranch at Janos and Santa Elena Canyon, Chihuahua, and Boquillas del Carmen, Coahuila, which are located on the southern shore of the Rio Grande and the grasslands bordering Texas and New Mexico.
