In 1861, the lone wolf was leading Eagle Ling on his first hunt. He stopped and told Eagle Ling the rules. Once he sees a herd of antelopes, Eagle Ling needs to wait for an older man to signal that when it's time to kill, kill only as many of his own horses as he can carry. The lone wolf beckoned as he advanced, and suddenly, they were on their way.
The lone wolf and eagle feather are the Kiowa people, one of several indigenous groups living in the Great Plains. By the middle of the 18th century, many Plains peoples began using horses to hunt large numbers of bison, the largest land beast of prey in North America.
They made a living from bison meat, making tents from bison skins in the summer, blankets from winter skins, and tools from bison bones and horns, with tendons used as sewing threads. But in the coming decades, millions of bison will be slaughtered, and the survival and culture of plains societies will be fundamentally and deliberately threatened.
After the Civil War, thousands of American settlers began to occupy the plains with the intention of exploiting the natural resources. In the 60s of the 19th century, the Plains tribes began to rebel against the American ** team. William Sherman was very unhappy with the defeat of the army. His brutal military tactics had recently helped end the Civil War, and in 1869 he was appointed chief of the American Army.
Now his focus is on the so-called "Indian question". The United States is determined to force Native Americans into designated areas they call "reservations." So that they could control the indigenous people while making profits for American settlers and corporations. Sherman vowed to stay in the west until the Indians were all killed or sent to a place where they could be watched, in his words.
At the same time, there has been a surge in demand for leather, such as conveyor belts used to connect industrial machines. To meet this need, American hunters armed with rifles slaughtered bison throughout the plains. Sherman and the other military ** realized that their goals could be easily achieved by letting this faltering industrial economy run unchecked.
The idea was that if hunters caused the bison population to plummet, the indigenous inhabitants of the plains would be forced to succumb and starve to death. An American colonel told a visiting British lieutenant to kill every bison you saw. Every dead bison means the disappearance of an Indian. The U.S. side refuses to enforce treaties that prohibit civilian hunters from entering tribal territory, and sometimes even provides protection and ammunition for hunters.
Many hunters can kill up to 50 bison per day. In two months in 1876, a single hunter killed 5,855 bison. The near-incessant sound of his rifle caused him to become deaf in one ear. Some of the bison shot by the hunters staggered on all fours and struggled to escape, eventually dying. Usually, hunters only take the skin and tongue of the bison, and the rest of it rots. Inexperienced skinners would damage the leather during the skinning process, and abandoned bison carcasses were torn to shreds by other animals. So hunters began to poison the bison so that they could also collect wolf skins.
Native Americans began to intervene, and humanitarians and animal rights groups tried to intervene as bison populations plummeted. In 1874, a bill prohibiting the killing of bison in federal territories even passed Congress, but was vetoed by the United States. After all, this appalling tactic is working. Many plains tribes faced famine and were forced into reservations.
In 1800, thousands of bison were still roaming the Great Plains. By 1900, there were fewer than 1,000 left in the world. Some wealthy U.S. citizens established bison sanctuaries, which helped save the species. But the primary function of these preserves is as a tourist attraction, and some of them even carve more land from Native American reservations.
As of 2021, the bison population has grown to about 500,000 heads. The vast majority live on private ranches. In recent years, some plains tribes have reintroduced about 20,000 bison to tribal lands. They aim to **and restore the relationship that was so blatantly attacked during the Bison**.
Do you think you have the right to bison to live?What about that healthy ecosystem?