Flash-Pack » buffalo

The End of the Open Range

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:06:06 +0000

Between 1865 and 1887, the Great Plains experienced a dramatic faunal change as the vast buffalo herds were eliminated and millions of Texas cattle moved north onto the open ranges of Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas and Montana. Ranchers rarely bothered to acquire legal title to grazing lands; they simply “squatted” on what was still largely the public domain, creating a unique cattle kingdom. Eventually, the lure of immense cattle profits led to overcrowding and overgrazing, the problem exacerbated by the arrival of sheepherders and homesteaders to the region in the 1880s. As competition for grasslands increased, bitter range wars broke out between sheepherders and cattlemen in Colorado, Wyoming and elsewhere. And violence also erupted between cattlemen and farms, notably in the 1892 Johnson County Cattle War in Wyoming. But nature played the biggest role in bringing the open range cattle era to an end. A summer drought in 1886 was followed by the worst winter on record when blizzards, icy winds and unusually bitter cold blasted through the northern ranges. Millions of cattle, stranded in the snow, unable to paw down to the grass beneath, starved or froze to death. The ranchers who stayed in business after the so-called “Great Die-Up” learned to confine their herds to manageable fenced-in areas equipped with sufficient feed, water and shelter to sustain them year-round.

The Hoop is Broken

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 05:01:19 +0000

The 1876 battle of the Little Bighorn marked the peak of the Sioux resistance; by 1877, the Army had forced the hostiles into exile or surrender. Sitting Bull and Gall fled to Canada with their band, staying several years. Crazy Horse, after brief confinement on a reservation, was killed while under military arrest. The Great Sioux Reservation was reduced; the different sub tribes assigned to different agencies on it. But deprived of freedom and purpose, the Indians adjusted badly to reservation life. In 1883, Sitting Bull returned to the reservation and remained there, except for one year with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, as the preeminent leader of his people. In 1890, a new messianic religion spread among the Sioux. Promising that whites would disappear and that buffalo and all the dead Indians would return to the Plains, it called upon Indians to perform the Ghost Dance. The reservation agent, alarmed by the Ghost Dancing, ordered Sitting Bull arrested, but the great Chief was killed in the process. This precipitated a crisis, culminating two weeks later in the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek. There, while disarming a Sioux band, the Army opened fire on several hundred men, women and children. On recalling that day, Sioux holy man Black Elk would later say, “the nation’s hoop is broken.”

The Railroads and the Indians

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:21:22 +0000

The consequences of the building of the transcontinental railroad were many and varied — but on no one was the impact greater than the Plains Indians, who lost both their food supply and their land. Though the buffalo was extinct east of the Mississippi by 1860, there were still two great herds on the Plains, totaling perhaps 15 million. With the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, white hunters began supplying buffalo meat to railroad construction gangs. Beginning in the 1870s, buffalo were also killed for their tongues, prized as a delicacy, and shot for sport from trains. After a market developed for buffalo hides, hunters engaged in systematic and wholesale slaughter. By 1883 the southern herd had been exterminated and a scientific expedition could find only 200 survivors of the northern herd.

The railroads, having contributed inadvertently to the buffalo’s demise, played a more deliberate role in colonizing the Great Plains. Having millions of acres for sale and seeing in settlement the means of generating rail traffic, the railroad companies spent lavishly on attempts to attract settlers from the eastern states and Europe. As well as distributing millions of items of promotional literature, they held out such inducements as credit sales, free “land-exploring” tickets and even temporary accommodations — all of which were remarkably effective.

The Buffalo Hunt

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:08:09 +0000

Once the Plains Indians had acquired the horse, pursuit of the buffalo came to dominate tribal life. Scouts were sent out to locate the wandering herds, whose whereabouts were unpredictable. When a herd was discovered, prayers were offered, preparations were made, and men and horses were dispatched to the hunt. Women followed, their task to break and move camp near to the hunting grounds. The hunt itself was dangerous and dramatic. The usual method was the “surround,” in which the herd was almost encircled, then allowed to run while mounted hunters detached the animals from flank and rear with bows and buffalo-lances. Later arrivals butchered the kill, and packed and transported it to the campsite. There, every part of the animal was put to use — its flesh for food; its hide for clothing, shoes, tipis and blankets; its bones for implements and ornaments; its horns for cups, ladles and spoons; its sinews for thread and bowstrings; and even its dung for fuel. Meat not consumed immediately was preserved by drying or “jerking” or by mixing with wild berries and fat to be stored for emergencies as “pemmican.”

Western Wildlife

webadmin@brainspiral.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:03:58 +0000

Unlike the thickly forested regions east of the Mississippi, the arid Great Plains were largely devoid of trees and other vegetation save for a matting of short grasses. Even so, the Plains teemed with wildlife. The jackrabbit and prairie dog required a minimum of water. Other species, like the deer, antelope, coyote and wolf, flourished in the parched conditions and also possessed the speed and elusiveness necessary to survival in such open country. Those traits were not shared by the most famous of the Plains animals, the buffalo or American bison. Their nearsightedness and ponderous movements made them easy prey to hunters, but until the latter portion of the 19th century, buffalo roamed the Plains in immense herds, their numbers estimated in the tens of millions. Beyond the western rim of the Plains, the high forests and grassy valleys between mountain peaks sheltered a great variety of wildlife — grizzly and brown bear, elk, mountain lion, bighorn sheep — while in the streams and lake margins, beaver and other fur-bearing species were plentiful.