HIST 355: paper 2
Why the Buffalo Went Away
The decimation of the buffalo populations in the region known as the American Great Plains in the mid-nineteenth century is a story typically treated as a simple relationship of a single cause resulting in a single effect. This story is one in which white settlers, moving westward with their wagons, their trains, and their capitalist (or enlightened) bloodlust hunted nearly to extinction the vast herds of buffalo that had provided the livelihood of numerous plains Indian tribes.[1] In searching for a single cause that led to the massive reduction of these creatures, the story eschews the complexities of life and history. Rather than there being a monolithic actor (the White Man) who brought about nearly single handedly the buffalos’ decline, there were actually multiple players, responding to and bringing about a number of social, material, and intellectual changes. The complex interplay between various groups of humans with differing ways of conceiving nature caused increased stress to be put directly upon the buffalo populations, as well as upon the tenuous environment that supported them, leading to their drastic disappearance from the Plains.
It is important first to address the intellectual underpinnings that influence the telling of the prolific creature’s disappearance. No doubt, the way in which humans perceived their relationship to nature also profoundly influenced their actions during the 1800’s. The environmental historian William Cronon states that the study of history follows the same structure as narrative, taking either a declensionist, or downward bound, structure or a progressive configuration in which the end is “better” than the beginning.[2] In assessing the theories as to why the buffalo went away, one often encounters the moral lessons that man’s avarice was to blame or, conversely, man’s illustrious civilizing spirit was to credit. An example of the former historical interpretation is that of Plenty-Coups when he stated in a 1930 interview that “when the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.”[3] Plenty-Coups’ sorrowful conclusion indicated not only his culture’s physical dependence, but also an acute spiritual connection that would run aground with the capitalist views of encroaching whites. Nearly 50 years later an editor of The Daily Chronicle advanced another take: “Few should weep over the buffalo. America never would have blossomed to its current status in world leadership unless the buffalo were removed from the land.”[4] Academics have also adopted this view. William Prescott Webb’s tale of the west is one in which hardy, industrious whites triumphed over the adversity of nature.[5] These views were also present during the 1800’s and were instrumental in explaining and justifying different peoples’ actions towards nature.
Changing human relationships altered the hitherto balanced environment of the buffalo. Given the buffalo’s immeasurable importance to the Indian tribes, intense rivalry between warring tribes formed over areas where buffalo were plentiful, leading to the formation of “buffer zones.” These contested areas were areas which no single tribe was able to dominate and control, causing the zone to be dangerous for lingering tribes, yet paradoxically more safe for grazing buffalo.[6] Two major buffer zones had existed prior to 1840, but in that year, the warring Commanches, Kiowas, Cheyannes, and Arapahos struck a peace deal. Suddenly the Western buffer zone vanished.[7] What followed was the rapid decline of buffalo populations in the recently protected area by native hunting. Whereas it had been perilous to dally there previously, now the various tribes could hunt without fear of attack from rival tribes, and hunt they did. In 1855, it was estimated that Plains Indians killed between 10-13 buffalo annually.[8] Why did they hunt so many?
While the Indians depended upon the buffalo for the majority of their daily needs, it was clear that they were hunting to generate a surplus for trade to whites. The Indians became increasingly dependent upon the buffalo to provide them with a desirable good that could be traded for goods provided by whites. The reasons given for increased trade are uncertain- to supplement the diet that was lost through decreased emphasis on subsistence agriculture, to buy guns to deal with increased inter-Indian rivalry over the remaining buffer zone, to obtain alcohol, or perhaps a combination of those and other factors.[9] But it is clear that changing social dynamics, both between Indian tribes and between Indian tribes and whites, contributed to the decimation of the buffalo.
The end of the buffer zones and increased Indian contribution to the fur trade alone are not likely to have caused the near extermination of the buffalo, but when combined with the unintended depletion of the bison’s’ habitat by both livestock and humans, it was devastating. Contrary to the celebratory after-the-fact opinion of the Daily Chronicle editor that whites deliberately killed off the buffalo in order to make room for “superior breeds [of livestock], crops, cities, human growth and progress,” contemporaries of the buffalo crisis attributed the animal’s disappearance primarily to hunting and failed to realize the fatal consequences that they and their furry friends had upon the buffalos’ environment.[10] Yet, it was not wholly deliberate. These large creatures had developed a highly attuned relationship with their arid habitat, moving between the protective wooded river valleys during the harsh winter and early spring where they were able to find food, and the high plains during the summer where grass abounded.[11] As whites and their livestock moved westward, they sought refuge in the same river valleys as the buffalo. These domesticated animals devoured the grasses in the valleys not only in the spring, but up through the summer, so that when winter rolled around and the buffalo again came down to escape the winter, they found a dearth of food. Cattle itself was a valuable commodity within the encroaching capitalist system. As with other markets, the reigning view of the cattle trade was that more cattle was more money, and more money was progress. If at the time this view did not directly encourage the ruin of the buffalo, it also did not promote a deep need to consider the ramifications of exploiting all of the “free” land. When the effects of overland travelers were compounded with Indians and their horses also descending into the valleys during the winter and a long drought beginning in the 1850’s, the results were devastating.[12] The physical alteration of the land by humans and livestock upset the delicate balance that had allowed buffalo to survive through trying times.
The factors that attributed to the decimation of the buffalo were many and they interacted in complex ways. Indians and Indians, Indians and whites, humans and animals, animals and plants, biotic organisms and climate- all of these actors commingled in such a way as to lead to the rapid decline of buffalo populations. The arrogant white hunter may have rung the death knell for the buffalo, but it was the disastrous interaction between many different factors that led both directly and indirectly to their destruction.
Works Cited
Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 286. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.Isenberg, Andrew, “The Destruction of the Bison,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant,. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.Linderman, Frank B. “American: The Life Story of a Great Indian,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 286. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.Webb, Walter Prescott. “The Great Plains,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 289. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.West, Elliot. The Way to the West (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press).“The Daily Chronicle,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 287. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005[1] West, Elliot. The Way to the West (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press), 53.
[2] Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 286. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.
[3] Linderman, Frank B. “American: The Life Story of a Great Indian,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 286. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.
[4] “The Daily Chronicle,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 287. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.
[5] Webb, Walter Prescott. “The Great Plains” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 289. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.
[6] West, Elliot. The Way to the West (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press), 61.
[7] ibid. 62.
[8] ibid. 66.
[9]Isenberg, Andrew, “The Destruction of the Bison,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 60. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005
[10] “The Daily Chronicle,” in Major Problems in Environmental History, edited by Carolyn Merchant, 287. New York, Cambridge University Press: 2005.
[11] West, Elliot. The Way to the West (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press), 74-75.
[12] ibid. 79.
