US Military Involvement In The Near Extinction of The Buffalo
The US Army sanctioned & actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds. The federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, to allow ranchers to range their cattle without competition from other bovines, & primarily to weaken the North American Indian population by removing their main food source & to pressure them onto the Indian reservations during times of conflict. Without the bison, native people of the plains were often forced to leave the land or starve to death. One of the biggest advocates of this strategy was General William Tecumseh Sherman. 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 10 regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes, until they became too scarce to support the redskins." 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.That tactic also made curious sense, for in soldiers' minds the buffalo & the Plains Indian were virtually inseparable."
Albert Bierstadt (German-born American painter, 1830-1902) The last Buffalo or Bison (1888)
