The Last Wild Bison

Bison in a snowstorm, Yellowstone NP WY. Photo by George Wuerthner

The wild bison in Yellowstone National Park are the last major herd of buffalo, the least domesticated members of their genus left in the United States. When Yellowstone was established in 1872, an estimated 25 wild bison roamed the park, a relic of the great herds that once roamed the entire West. With protection, the Yellowstone bison herd numbers between 4000 and 6000 animals.

The decline of wild bison on the Great Plains began in the 1700s with the tribal adoption of horses by northern tribes who obtained them by trade from more southern tribes who had stolen them from the Spanish herds in New Mexico and Texas.


The romantic era of the plains Indian bison hunter, which has become the “stereotype Indian,” began at this time and lasted little more than a hundred years. This led to the regional extirpation of bison across much of the West.

The mounted hunter on a horse created a new predator for bison whose primary evolutionary predator defense was to run. Mounted horse riders could easily overcome bison. Buffalo hides became a significant source of commerce for Indian people, who used to obtain more horses and wives or trade goods like guns, ammo, metal knives, pots, and other accouterments necessary for survival.
In the past, before horses, hunting bison was haphazard. A hunter could carefully approach a herd and kill a few animals before the animals stampeded or left. Occasionally, entire herds could be driven over a cliff, but such situations were scarce.

This map shows the decline of bison. Commercial bison hunting did not start until after 1870, but by that time, bison had been reduced to a northern and southern herd, and extirpated from much of the West due to tribal hunting.

With the horse, hunters could roam further to find more distant animals, and mounted hunters could encircle a herd and kill an entire bison group. The horse also allowed for the transport of heavy hides and meat. With the horse, the Indian became a “super predator.”

Indian hunters preferably selected bison cows, the reproductive segment of the herd, for slaughter because their meat was better and their hides more valuable for all uses from tepees to trade.


By 1870, due to Indian slaughter, bison had been eradicated or were functionally extinct from Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Manitoba, South Dakota, New Mexico, Nebraska, western Wyoming, and portions of Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and Southwest Montana.

This was before any significant white settlement of the western plains and mountains, which only began after gold and silver were discovered, starting with the California gold rush of 1849, and later in other western states like Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, after the 1860s.

After the Civil War, with the coming of the railroads westward into the last refugees of the remaining herds, bison were slaughtered without mercy by white commercial hunters along with the tribal hunters. By the 1880s, bison were functionally extinct across the West.

Like almost all bison, even the animals at the National Bison Range, Moise, Montana are domesticated. Photo by George Wuerthner

EXTINCTION OF WILD BISON

A few small relic herds remained, mostly on private ranches, including the small Yellowstone herd. With protection, bison numbers grew, so over 400,000 or more bison are scattered around the country on private ranches, state parks, national parks, wildlife refuges, and other public lands. However, nearly all of them are managed like domestic livestock. They are not wild.

They are fenced inside small pastures so they cannot migrate. They are regularly fed hay or other feed during drought or in harsh winters when the snow is deep. They are often inoculated against disease. They are protected from predators. Many are selectively bred. In short, there are no wild bison herds of any significant size in the lower 48 states other than those that reside in Yellowstone National Park.

I find it difficult to believe that tribal hunters are sincere when they exclaim support for wild bison. If that were the case, they would abstain from killing bison trying to move beyond the park to other public lands.

Furthermore, tribal acceptance of dead or alive bison helps the Montana Livestock Industry achieve its goal of keeping buffalo bottled up in Yellowstone National Park.


Posted

in

,

by

Comments

  1. Ida Lupine Avatar
    Ida Lupine

    If you didn’t know better, you’d think that people still want to finish the job of the extinction of bison. I know a lot of ranchers would. The only thing stopping them is the laws, which are on shaky ground again.

    It’s sad to think that nothing has changed, and the new thinking is still not to protect our last bison, but to let Native Americans kill them.

    Nobody seems to want to realize that so much damage had been done in the pas that cannot be repaired, and it is no longer 200 years ago where things can be picked up where we left off!

    1. Linda Emerson Avatar
      Linda Emerson

      Ida, very well said, and I totally agree.

  2. Jeff Hoffman Avatar
    Jeff Hoffman

    I applaud George for being someone to finally tell the truth about this instead of the lies we were always fed about white people slaughtering bison. This is, of course, ultimately the fault of white colonizers because they brought the horses here, but it’s a very different story. And as George also pointed out, the white colonizers slaughtered bison when they got to what is now the western U.S., so no one here is claiming that they’re innocent either.

    Like all other environmental and ecological problems, the problem is humans in general, and only a tiny fraction of 1% of them have the proper love and respect for nonhumans that’s required in order to prioritize them. With the colonizer culture eliminating ever more traditional indigenous culture here, the remaining Natives act more like the white colonizers — whose culture has replaced theirs — every day, as their modern bison slaughters show.

    1. Dean Avatar
      Dean

      Hmm…why does it always have to be someone’s “fault” when dealing with historical facts? And why is it almost always in the same sentence with “white”?

  3. FukkThis RacistAuthor Avatar
    FukkThis RacistAuthor

    This is a horrendous mistelling of the story. Native Americans didn’t make the iconic bison skull mountains. Native Americans didn’t hunt bison by train car. I’m not saying “they used every piece” as the old story goes, but the author of this story will certainly rot in hell for their racist mistelling

    1. Allen von Altenburg Avatar
      Allen von Altenburg

      Oh, of course. If it’s not politically correct or if it doesn’t paint a glowing picture of various ethnicities and if it’s uttered by a white person, it’s racist. Be sure to rush to cry racist so fast that you don’t actually read or contemplate what the author has written. For example: “bison were slaughtered without mercy by white commercial hunters along with the tribal hunters.” That’s hardly a race based statement.

      Nevermind refuting any inaccuracies by providing facts and possibly pointing people to sources so they learn. Just whine “racist” and keep the ignorance flowing.

      1. Dano Avatar
        Dano

        EXACTLY!!!👍👍

  4. Gerald J. Lynch Avatar
    Gerald J. Lynch

    Whites slaughtered the bison to starve the Native Americans it was a military order. George is wrong. Another false narrative to blame the poor of this country.

  5. Debby Avatar
    Debby

    I agree with this miss telling over who’s to blame as far as I know, when Native Americans made a large kill nothing was left to be unused. Hooves,bone hair hide sinews,teeth and dung were utilized,not just the hump and hides like the white buffalo hunters it was the wanton waste thats the shame of it all

  6. Jonathan Ratner Avatar

    I am not a scholar of native american history (and I am in no way defending the barbarity of the european invaders) but the idea of non white people living “in harmony” with the earth is simply bullshit. No particular race of humans has or had a monopoly on barbaric behavior or a monopoly on impacts on the planet.

    The basic formula is I = P x T x E where I is impacts, P is population, T is tools and E is energy to drive those tools

    See https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2024/08/08/i-p-x-t-x-e-part-1/

    There are no significant behavioral differences in humans based on superficial genetic differences of skin color, etc.

  7. george wuerthner Avatar
    george wuerthner

    Bison were not slaughtered to starve the Indians. The whites did kill them to get the hides for machine belts in the Industrial East. The commercial kill started after 1870 with the coming of the railroads across the plains which provided an efficient means of transport of the heavy hides. And one consequence was the eradication of some of the last bison herds, but this was a side consequence of the hide trade.

    https://www.thewildlifenews.com/2021/06/01/indian-culpability-in-bison-demise/

    The above piece documents how Indian hide hunting beginning with the adoption of the horse contributed to the extirpation of the bison across much of its range.

    Although it is a widely circulated myth that the federal government had a policy of bison eradication to force the tribes on reservation, that is not entirely accurate. Certainly there were many, particularly those living on the Frontier who were suffering from Indian attacks who would have welcome such a policy, but it just wasn’t government policy.

    Indeed, Congress passed legislation to make killing female bisons a crime. Cerainly if the goal was to starve the Indians, this would not have happened.

    Plus, even while the big kill began in the 1870s, all along the Indians were killing bison-tens of thousands of them a year. In particular, they killed female bison–the reproductive segment of the population.

    While it is often portrayed that this final slaughter of the bison was widely supported by the U.S. Army and most politicians to subdue the tribes, there was significant opposition to the slaughter. Some members of Congress and in the military thought the butchery was a shameful policy.

    For example, Arizona Congressman R.C. McCormick called the bison slaughter “wantonly wicked” and considered it “vandalism”. McCormick introduced legislation in 1871 to halt the butchery that: “excepting for the purpose of using the meat for food or preserving the skin, it shall be unlawful for any person to kill the bison or buffalo found anywhere upon the public lands of the United States; and for the violation of the law the offender shall, upon conviction before any court of competent jurisdiction, be liable to a fine of $100 for each animal killed”.

    Major General Hazen added his objection to the butchery. He wrote: “The theory that the buffalo should be killed to deprive the Indians of food is a fallacy, and these people are becoming harmless under a rule of justice.” Lieutenant Colonel Brackett, another military officer, added his objections, saying: “The wholesale butchery of buffaloes upon the plains is as needless as it is cruel.”

    In 1874 new legislation was introduced by Rep. Fort of Illinois, which declared it would be unlawful for anyone, not an Indian to kill, wound, or in any way destroy any female buffalo of any age found at large within any Territory of the United States. In the Congressional debate that followed Fort’s legislative effort, another member of Congress argued that killing off the bison was the only means to “civilize” the tribes. Fort bellowed: “I am not in favor of civilizing the Indian by starving him to death, by destroying the means which God has given him for his support.”

    Fort’s legislation passed both the House and Senate, but President Ulysses Grant, was disstracted by other political concerns, and the bill died in a pocket veto.

    As recorded in P. Norris’s Report on Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of Interior in 1879, the Montana territorial government passed an ACT to protect bison in certain counties in Montana Territory.

    The legislation held that any person who shall willfully shoot, or otherwise -kill, for the period often years from and after the passage of this act, any buffalo or bison, within the counties of Madison, Jefferson, Deer Lodge, and Lewis and Clarke, Montana Territory, shall be fined not less than one Inindred dollars nor more than two hundred dollars, or imprisoned in the county jail not less two months and not more than six months, or both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court.

    However, despite the apparent decline in bison, the northern herd was still being slaughtered by Indians. Between 1874 and 1877, between 80,000 to 100,000 buffalo robes were shipped from Fort Benton in Montana annually, with 12,000 hides contributed by the Blackfeet tribe alone. Again, keep in mind that the northern plains were still in control of the Indians, with only a few white traders living among them.

    But look at the map in my piece. It shows the decline of bison across much of its range–long before there was any white settlement, even Army posts, much less commercial hunters.

    People don’t like to have their myths challenged, but the myth of Indians being different from other humans is just that–a myth. Humans tend to behave the same no matter what their race or ethnic identificaiton. And that is they tend to put their interests first.

    Tribes traded hides for things they needed which they could not produce like guns, ammo, metal pots, metal knives, etc all of which made their lives easier and better (or they would not have wanted to get these things). And the cost was bison hides.

    1. christopher john walker Avatar
      christopher john walker

      Your examples are limited and a joke at best. Much of it was after the wholesale slaughter of the bison again by those that came to this country, not those that owned the country to begin with.

      So out of almost 100,000 pelts a year only about a 10th was from the indigenous in your own words. So, who again was slaughtering more again? And why did they need to? Oh that’s right we forced those from the east into the lands of the west, constrained those in the west from their ancestral lands and even forced to share what land that had not been stolen yet to not only their tribes but those of the east that survived the journey or were not slaughtered by the expansion west.

      Stick to being a hunting guide and leave actual history to the actual experts and not the tall tale you told. Because that is all it really is just a story from your mind, using limited historical reference to justify your ignorant stance that somehow the indigenous were the leaders of the slaughter and the savages of Europe just were following their lead and it was only for economic benefit of the European savages and not to starve and destroy the indigenous wholesale.

      1. Dean Avatar
        Dean

        How does a NOMADIC people “own a country” as you put it or any land for that matter? By your logic, do the English, French and German indigenous peoples have an exclusive right to their own land?

  8. Margaret F Walker Avatar
    Margaret F Walker

    This article is truly nothing more than fiction. Stop your attempt to rewrite history when documentation exists written by this government. It is in the national archives and states to kill all the buffalo to starve Native Tribes to force complacency. The Native Tribes only killed what was needed. Look at the original photographs of white men standing in front of pasture full of dead buffalo as far as the horizon that were left to rot. Your ignorance is so astounding on this subject I’m horrified it was even published.

  9. Terri Fallis Avatar
    Terri Fallis

    I agree with the previous but like all I also have a opinion. We have no place to comment on who slaughtered the “bison”. They too will go down in history as having been obliterated by humans to add to the extension of one more beautiful beast on our planet for whatever reason that were Gods intentions to be part of our world and gone. Sad indeed!

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?

Fantastic, here are the ground rules: No personal attacks, profanity, discriminatory language or threats. Keep it clean, civil and on topic. The Wildlife News does not fact check every comment but, when noticed, submissions containing clear misinformation, demonstrably false statements of fact or links to sites trafficking in such will not be posted.

Author

George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. Among his titles are Welfare Ranching-The Subsidized Destruction of the American West, Wildfire-A Century of Failed Forest Policy, Energy—Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth, Keeping the Wild-Against the Domestication of the Earth, Protecting the Wild—Parks, and Wilderness as the Foundation for Conservation, Nevada Mountain Ranges, Alaska Mountain Ranges, California’s Wilderness Areas—Deserts, California Wilderness Areas—Coast and Mountains, Montana’s Magnificent Wilderness, Yellowstone—A Visitor’s Companion, Yellowstone and the Fires of Change, Yosemite—The Grace and the Grandeur, Mount Rainier—A Visitor’s Companion, Texas’s Big Bend Country, The Adirondacks-Forever Wild, Southern Appalachia Country, among others.
He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.
In the past, he has worked as a cadastral surveyor in Alaska, a river ranger on several wild and scenic rivers in Alaska, a backcountry ranger in the Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska, a wilderness guide in Alaska, a natural history guide in Yellowstone National Park, a freelance writer and photographer, a high school science teacher, and more recently ecological projects director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology. He currently is the ED of Public Lands Media.
He has been on the board or science advisor of numerous environmental organizations, including RESTORE the North Woods, Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Association, Park Country Environmental Coalition, Wildlife Conservation Predator Defense, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Western Watersheds Project, Project Coyote, Rewilding Institute, The Wildlands Project, Patagonia Land Trust, The Ecological Citizen, Montana Wilderness Association, New National Parks Campaign, Montana Wild Bison Restoration Council, Friends of Douglas Fir National Monument, Sage Steppe Wild, and others.

Subscribe to get new posts right in your Inbox

×