It was 1861, and Lone Bear was leading Eagle Plume on his first-ever hunt. He paused and told Eagle Plume the rules: once he saw the bison herd, he needed to wait until someone older signaled; and when it came time, to kill only what his horse could carry. Lone Bear advanced, then beckoned, and suddenly they were off.
Eagle Plume and Lone Bear were Kiowa, which was one of several Indigenous groups that lived on the Great Plains. By the mid-1700s, many Plains nations were using horses to hunt the area’s plentiful bison, North America’s largest land mammals. They survived on bison meat, made the bison’s summer hides into lodges, and winter coats into blankets, and used bison bones and horns for tools and sinew as thread. But in the decades to come, millions of bison will be slaughtered, and the Plains societies’ survival and cultures fundamentally— and deliberately— threatened.
After the American Civil War, thousands of US settlers began occupying the Plains, intent on exploiting its natural resources. During the 1860s, Plains nations pushed back against the US military. William Sherman resented the army’s defeats. His ruthless military tactics had recently helped end the American Civil War. And, in 1869, he was appointed the US Army’s Commanding General. Now, his focus was on what he called “the Indian problem.” US government officials were determined to force Native American people into designated areas they called reservations. This way, they could control Indigenous people while US settlers and companies profited off their land. Sherman pledged to stay out west, in his words, “till the Indians are all killed or taken to a country where they can be watched.”
Meanwhile, the demand for leather, like the kind used for belting to connect industrial machinery, boomed. To meet the demand, US hunters armed with rifles killed bison all across the Plains. Sherman and other military officials realized they could meet their goal passively, by letting this lurching industrial economy run unchecked. Their idea was that, if hunters depleted the bison, Plains Indigenous peoples would be starved into submission.
One US colonel told a visiting British lieutenant, “Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.” The US military refused to enforce treaties that barred civilian hunters from tribal territory, and it sometimes provided hunters with protection and ammunition.
Many hide hunters killed 50 bison a day. During a two-month span in 1876, one hunter killed 5,855 bison, the near-constant firing of his rifle leaving him deaf in one ear. Some of the bison the hunters shot wandered away and died. Commonly, the hunters would only retrieve the bison's hides and tongues, leaving the rest to rot. Inexperienced skinners destroyed hides as they flayed them. And bison carcasses that were left were torn to pieces by other animals. So hunters began lacing bison meat with poison so they could also collect wolf pelts.
Native American people protested, and humanitarian and animal rights groups tried to intervene as the bison population plummeted. Legislation that would make bison hunting illegal in federal territories even passed Congress in 1874— but the US President vetoed it. After all, the sordid strategy was working: many Plains nations faced starvation and were being forced onto reservations.
Back in 1800, tens of millions of bison swept the Great Plains. By 1900, there were fewer than 1,000 in existence. Some wealthy US citizens created bison preserves which helped save the species. But the preserves functioned mainly as tourist attractions, and some of them carved even more land off Native American reservations. As of 2021, the bison population had grown to around 500,000. A vast majority live on private ranches. In recent years, Plains nations have reintroduced some 20,000 bison to tribal lands. They aim to heal and restore the relationship that was so flagrantly attacked during the bison slaughter.
