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Decimation of the Bison

Reference Articles
The increase of westward expansion and the railroad created in the 19th century was
devastating for Native Americans who depended on bison, the chief game animal and a
sacred symbol for many tribes. The railroads brought west European Americans who
shot thousands of bison from the windows of trains for sport as they journeyed across
the country and hunters who killed thousands of bison to meet demands from the east
for their hides.

Railroads and Bison Extermination

The bison once blanketed the midsection of the North American continent, moving across the grasslands of the
Great Plains in enormous herds. Estimates of the buffalo population circa 1800 range from 25 to 60 million
animals. These animals were the single-most essential natural resource to the indigenous tribes that roamed the
Great Plains. Virtually every piece of the buffalo was put to use by the tribespeople. For example, buffalo meat
provided food, while their hides could be used as teepee covers, clothing, moccasin tops, bedding, bags, and
pouches; rawhide provided material for moccasin soles, snowshoes, shields, musical instruments, and horse
tack; and the buffalos' horns were used for utensils, while the bones were used for weapons and tools.

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Many historians date the beginning of the demise of the vast American buffalo herds to the opening quarter
century of the 1800s, when the populations of eastern cities clamored for buffalo robes to help them stay warm
during the bitter winter months. However, it was not until midcentury, when white hunting of bison began in
earnest, that the herds declined appreciably. By the 1870s, eastern tanners had devised an effective means of
turning bison skin into leather, which had become an essential component in driving the industrial machinery of
the nation's manufacturing centers. The railroads allowed hunters to transport the volume of hides necessary to
satisfy rising industrial demand.

As rail companies established new routes across the Great Plains and the mountain West in the 1860s and
1870s, they carried market hunters armed with a mandate to feed the leather needs of the Industrial Revolution.
In the early 1870s, the Santa Fe, Kansas Paci c, and Union Paci c Railroads alone shipped more than 1 million
buffalo hides east in just two years. The market hunters were aided in their slaughter by the U.S. Army, which
embraced a policy of bison eradication as a way of subjugating the Plains Indians.

A Last Stand for the Herds

In the mid-1870s, bands of Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and southern Cheyenne mounted a violent last stand to
save the dwindling buffalo herds and their own way of life. They were defeated, however, and the market hunters
continued to follow new rail lines in pursuit of the remaining buffalo herds. In 1876, for example, the Northern
Paci c Railway reached Bismarck, North Dakota, and began pushing its tracks west into the buffalo country. That
same year, the U.S. Army began the campaign that broke Sioux control of the northern plains. In 1880, the assault
on the herd began in earnest. By 1882, there were an estimated 5,000 white hunters and skinners at work on the
northern plains, and by the end of 1883 the herd was no more.

By 1890, the American bison population—once in the tens of millions—had been reduced to less than 1,000
individuals. This left Native Americans of the Plains without one of their chief resources, anchoring them to
reservations where they depended on the U.S. government for food, shelter, and basic supplies.

A. M. Mannion

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Further Reading

Branch, E. D. The Hunting of the Buffalo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997; Hillstrom, Kevin, and Laurie
Collier Hillstrom. The Industrial Revolution in America: Iron and Steel, Railroads, Steam Shipping. Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005; Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2000; Tucker, Spencer C., ed. The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890: A Political, Social, and
Military History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011.

 
MLA Citation
Mannion, A. M. "Decimation of the Bison." American History, ABC-CLIO, 2021, americanhistory.abc-
clio.com/Search/Display/2250841. Accessed 18 Mar. 2021.
 
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