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Bison hunting (hunting of the American bison, also commonly known as the American buffalo) was an lifeway of the Plains Indians peoples who inhabited the vast grasslands on the Interior Plains of North America, before the animal's near-extinction in the late 19th century following United States expansion into the West. Bison hunting was an important spiritual practice and source of material for these groups, especially after the European introduction of the horse in the 16th through 19th centuries enabled new hunting techniques. The species' dramatic decline was the result of habitat loss due to the expansion of ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting practiced by settler hunters increased Indigenous hunting pressure due to settler demand for bison hides and meat, and cases of a deliberate policy by settler governments to destroy the food source of the Indigenous peoples.
To Plains tribes, the buffalo is one of the most sacred animals, and they feel obligated to treat them with respect. When they are about to kill a buffalo, they will offer it a prayer. Failures in the hunt could have been attributed to poorly performed rituals.
The earliest evidence for buffalo jumps dates to around 1400.
Working on foot, a few groups of Native Americans at times used fires to channel an entire herd of buffalo over a cliff, sometimes killing far more than they could use.
A Crow Nation historian has related some ways to get bison.Medicine Crow, Joseph (1992): From the Heart of the Crow Country. The Crow Indians' Own Stories. New York, pp. 86–99. With the help of songs, hazers, drive lines of stones (cf. desert kites), and a medicine man pointing down the line with a pair of hindquarters in his hands, the Crows drove many bison over a cliff. A successful drive could give 700 animals.Lowie, Robert H. (1983): The Crow Indians. Lincoln and London, p. 73.
Castaneda saw Indigenous women butchering bison with a flint fixed on a short stick. He admired how quickly they completed the task. Blood to drink was filled in emptied guts, which were carried around the neck.Castaneda (1966), p. 112.
Each animal produces from of meat.
A good horseman could easily lance or shoot enough bison to keep his tribe and family fed, as long as a herd was nearby. The bison provided meat, leather, and sinew for bows.
A fast-hunting horse would usually be spared and first mounted near the bison. The hunter rode on a pack horse until then.Nabokov, Peter (1982): Two Leggings. The Making of a Crow Warrior. Lincoln and London, p. 158. Hunters with few horses ran beside the mount to the hunting grounds.Murray, Charles A. (1974): Travels in North America. Vol. I. New York, p. 386. Accidents, sometimes fatal, happened from time to time to both rider and horse.Chardon, F. A. (1997): Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834–1839. Lincoln and London, p. 159.Boyd, Maurice (1981): Kiowa Voices. Ceremonial Dance, Ritual and Song. Part I. Fort Worth, p. 15.
To avoid disputes, each hunter used arrows marked in a personal way.Hyde, George E. (1987): Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters. Norman, p. 200.Walker, James R. (1982): Lakota Society. Lincoln and London, p. 40.Fletcher & La Flesche (1992), p. 272. Lakota people hunter Bear Face recognized his arrows by one of three "arrow wings" made of a pelican feather.Densmore, Frances (1918): Teton Sioux Music. Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology. Bulletin 61. Washington, p. 439. Castaneda wrote how it was possible to shoot an arrow right through a buffalo.Castaneda (1966), p. 71. The Pawnees had contests as to how many bison it was possible to kill with just one bowshot. The best result was three.Blaine, Martha R. (1990): Pawnee Passage, 1870–1875. Norman and London, p. 81. An arrow stuck in the animal was preferred as the most lethal. It would inflict more damage with each jump and move.Walker, James R. (1982): Lakota Society. Lincoln and London, p. 80. A non-indigenous traveler credited the hunters with cutting up a bison and packing the meat on a horse in less than 15 minutes.Murray, Charles A. (1974): Travels in North America. Vol. I. New York, p. 297.
When the bison stayed away and made hunting impossible, famine became a reality. The hard experience of starvation found its way into stories and myths. A folk tale of the Kiowa begins "Famine once struck the Kiowa People..."Boyd, Maurice (1983): Kiowa Voices. Myth, Legends and Folktales. Part II. Fort Worth, p. 127. "The people were without food and no game could be found..." makes an Omaha myth certain.Fletcher & La Flesche (1992), p. 148. A fur trader noted how some Sioux were in want of meat at one time in 1804.Tableau, Pierre-Antoine (1968): Tableau's Narrative of Loisel's Expedition to the Upper Missouri. Norman, p. 72. Starving Dakota people passed by Fort Clark in 1836.Chardon, F. A. (1997): Chardon's Journal At Fort Clark, 1834–1839. Lincoln and London, p. 52.
The Kiowas have an early history in parts of present-day Montana and South Dakota. Here they fought the Cheyenne, "who challenged their right to hunt buffalo".Boyd, Maurice (1983): Kiowa Voices. Myth, Legends and Folktales. Part II. Fort Worth, p. 79. Later, the Kiowas headed for the south together with the Comanche, when "the Lakota (Teton Sioux) drove them from the Black Hills territory".Boyd, Maurice (1983): Kiowa Voices. Myth, Legends and Folktales. Part II. Fort Worth, p. xxvi. In present-day Montana, the better-armed Blackfoot pushed the Ktunaxa, Flathead, and Eastern Shoshone off the plains.Calloway, Colin G. (April 1982): "The Inter-tribal Balance of Power on the Great Plains, 1760–1850". The Journal of American Studies, Vol. 16., No. 1, pp. 25–47, p. 40. At the start of the 19th century, they claimed the buffalo ranges entirely to the Rocky Mountains and fought all conceived as intruders. The less numerical tribe peoples west of the continental divide did not accept this. Their ancestors had hunted on the Great Plains and they would continue the tradition at all cost. "When we go to hunt Bison, we also prepare for war with the Peeagans Farr, William E. (Winter 2003): "Going to Buffalo. Indian Hunting Migrations across the Rocky Mountains. Part 1". Montana, the Magazine of Western History, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 2–21, p. 6.
Trapping
Before the introduction of horses, bison were herded into large chutes made of rocks and willow branches (drive lines) and trapped in a corral called a buffalo pound, and then slaughtered or stampeded over cliffs, called . Both pound and jump archaeological sites are found in several places in the U.S. and Canada.
In the case of a jump, large groups of people would herd the bison for several miles, forcing them into a stampede that drove the herd over a cliff.
In the dog days, the women of a Blackfoot camp made a curved fence of travois tied together, front end up. Runners drove the game towards the enclosure, where hunters waited with , as well as bows and arrows.Ewers, John C. (1988): "A Blood Indian's Conception of Tribal Life in Dog Days". Indian Life On The Upper Missouri. Norman and London, p. 9.
Henry Kelsey described a hunt on the northern plains in 1691. First, the tribe surrounded a herd. Then they would "gather themselves into a smaller Compass Keeping ye Beast still in ye middle".Kelsey, Henry (1929): The Kelsey Papers. Ottawa, p. 13. The hunters killed as many as they could before the animals broke through the human ring.
Russell Means states that bison were killed by using a method that coyotes implemented. Coyotes will sometimes cut one bison off from the herd and chase it in a circle until the animal collapses or gives up due to exhaustion.9781482068108 ISBN 9781482068108
During winter, Chief One Heart's camp would maneuver the game out on slick ice, where it was easier to kill with hunting weapons.
The Hidatsa near the Missouri River confined the buffalo on the weakest ice at the end of winter. When it cracked, the current swept the animals down under thicker ice. The people hauled the drowned animals ashore when they emerged downstream.Wood, Raymond W. and Thomas D. Thiessen (1987): Early Fur Trade On The Northern Plains. Canadian Traders Among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738–1818. Norman and London, p. 265. Although not hunted in a strict sense, the nearby Mandan secured bison, and drowned by chance, when the ice broke. A trader observed the young men "in the drift ice leap from piece to piece, often falling between, plunging under, darting up elsewhere and securing themselves upon very slippery flakes" before they brought the carcasses to land.Wood, Raymond W. and Thomas D. Thiessen (1987): Early Fur Trade On The Northern Plains. Canadian Traders Among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738–1818. Norman and London, p. 239.
Butchering methods and yield
The Olsen–Chubbuck archaeological site in Colorado, where buffalo herds were driven over a cliff, reveals some techniques, which may or may not have been widely used. The method involves skinning down the back to get at the tender meat just beneath the surface, the area known as the "hatched area". After the removal of the hatched area, the front legs are cut off as well as the shoulder blades. Doing so exposes the hump meat (in the Wood Bison), as well as the meat of the ribs and the Bison's inner organs. After everything was exposed, the spine was then severed and the pelvis and hind legs were removed. Finally, the neck and head were removed as one. This allowed for the tough meat to be dried and made into pemmican.
Horse introduction and changing hunting dynamic
Horses taken from the Spanish were well-established in the nomadic hunting cultures by the early 1700s, and Indigenous groups once living east of the Great Plains moved west to hunt the larger bison population. Intertribal warfare forced the Cheyenne to give up their cornfields at Biesterfeldt village and eventually cross west of the Missouri and become the well-known horseback buffalo hunters.Hyde, George E. (1987): Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters. Norman, p. 12. In addition to using bison for themselves, these Indigenous groups also traded meat and robes to village-based tribes.
Diminishing herds and the effects on tribes
Already Castaneda noted the typical relations of two different plains people relying heavily on the same food source: "They ... are enemies of each other."Castaneda (1966), p. 210. The bison hunting resulted in the loss of land for many tribal nations. Indirectly, it often disturbed the rhythm of tribal life, caused economic losses and hardship, and damaged tribal autonomy. As long as bison hunting went on, intertribal warfare was omnipresent.McGinnis, Anthony (1990): Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Evergreen.Ewers, John C. (Oct. 1975): "Intertribal Warfare as a Precursor of Indian-White Warfare on the Northern Great Plains". Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 397-410.
Loss of land and disputes over the hunting grounds
Tribes forced away from the game-rich areas had to try their luck on the edges of the best buffalo habitats. Small tribes found it hard to do even that. Due to attacks in the 1850s and 1860s, the villages of Upper Missouri "hardly dared go into the plains to hunt buffalo".Hyde, George E. (1987): Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters. Norman, p. 16. The Sioux would stay near Arikara villages "and keep the bison away, so they could sell meat and hides to the Arikaras".Meyer, Roy W. (1977): The Village Indians of the Upper Missouri. The Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras. Lincoln and London, p. 40.
In 1866, the Pend d'Oreilles crossed the Rocky Mountains from the west, just to be attacked by tribes as they entered the plains. They lost 21 people. The beaten hunting party returned in a "horrible condition" and "all nearly famished".U.S. Serial Set 1284, 39th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 2, House Executive Document No. 1, p. 315. Often, the attackers tried to capture dried meat, equipment, and horses during a fight.McGinnis, Anthony (1990): Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Evergreen, p. 122.Howard, James H. (1965) "The Ponca Tribe". Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology. Bulletin 195. Washington, p. 30. The lack of horses owing to raids reduced the chances of securing an ample amount of meat on the hunts. In 1860, the Ponca lost 100 horses,McGinnis, Anthony (1990): Counting Coup and Cutting Horses. Evergreen, p. 97. while the Mandan and Hidatsa saw the enemy disappear with 175 horses in a single raid in 1861.Meyer (1977), p. 108.
Conflicts between the bison-hunting tribes ranged from raids to massacres.Hyde, George E. (1987): Life of George Bent. Written From His Letters. Norman, p. 26.Paul, Eli R. (1997): Autobiography of Red Cloud. War Leader of the Oglalas. Chelsea, pp. 136–140 Camps were left without leaders. In the course of a battle, tipis and hides could be cut to pieces and tipi poles broken.Boller, Henry A. (1966): "Henry A. Boller: Upper Missouri River Fur Trader". North Dakota History, Vol. 33, pp. 106–219, 204. Organized bison hunts and camp moves were stopped by the enemy,Bowers, Alfred W. (1991): Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization. Moscow, p. 177. and villages had to flee their homes. The Sioux burned a village of Nuptadi Mandans in the last quarter of the 18th century.Bowers, Alfred W. (1991): Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization. Moscow, p. 360. Other villages of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara destroyed either completely or partially in attacks are two Hidatsa villages in 1834,Stewart, Frank H. (Nov. 1974): "Mandan and Hidatsa Villages in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries". Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 19, pp. 287–302, p. 296. Mitutanka on January 9, 1839Meyer (1977), p. 97. and Like-a-Fishhook Village in 1862.Meyer (1977), p. 119. The three tribes would routinely ask the U.S. army for assistance against stronger powers until the end of intertribal warfare in the area.Meyer (1977), pp. 105–106.
Eighteen out of 30 prominent Poncas were killed in a surprise attack in 1824, "including the famous Smoke-maker".Howard (1965), p. 27. At a stroke, the small tribe stood without any experienced leaders. In 1859, the Poncas lost two chiefs when a combined group of enemies charged a hunting camp.Howard (1965), p. 31. Half a Pawnee village was set ablaze during a large-scale attack in 1843, and the Pawnee never rebuilt it. More than 60 inhabitants lost their lives, including Chief Blue Coat.Jensen, Richard E. (Winter 1994): "The Pawnee Mission, 1834-1846". Nebraska History, Vol. 75, No. 4, pp. 301–310, p. 307. The otherwise numerous Small Robes band of the Piegan Blackfoot lost influence and some self-reliance after a severe River Crow attack on a moving camp at "Mountains on Both Sides" (Judith Gap, Montana) in 1845. "Their days of greatness were over."Bedford, Denton R. (1975): "The Fight at "Mountains on Both Sides". The Indian Historian, Vol. 8. No. 2, pp. 13–23, p. 22. In 1852, an Omaha delegation visited Washington, D.C. It would "request the federal government's protection".Scherer, Joanna Cohan (Fall 1997): "The 1852 Omaha Indian Delegation Daguerreotypes. A Preponderance of Evidence". Nebraska History Vol. 78, No. 3, pp. 116–121. p. 118. Five different nations raided the Omaha.
Due to the roaming behavior of bison, their mass destruction came with relative ease to the European hunters. When one bison in a herd is killed, the other bison gather around it. Due to this pattern, the ability of a hunter to kill one bison often led to the destruction of a large herd of them.
In 1889, an essay in a journal of the time observed:
Indigenous peoples whose lives depended on the Buffalo also continued to hunt, and they were faced with having to adapt to the arrival of European settlers in the Plains. While most struggled to continue their traditional ways, other Plains Indians were forced to adapt their style of hunting. Andrew Isenberg argues that some Native people embraced the fur trade and that adapting their hunting methods to include hunting on horseback, added to the number of bison they could hunt.
Commercial bison hunters also emerged at this time. Military forts often supported hunters, who would use their civilian sources near their military base. Though officers hunted bison for food and sport, professional hunters made a far larger impact on the decline of the bison population. Officers stationed in Fort Hays and Wallace even had bets in their "buffalo shooting championship of the world", between "Medicine Bill" Comstock and "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Some of these hunters would engage in mass bison slaughter to make a living.
Similarly, John Schofield would write in his memoirs: "With my cavalry and carbined artillery encamped in front, I wanted no other occupation in life than to ward off the savage and kill off his food until there should no longer be an Indian frontier in our beautiful country." In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant vetoed the act of Congress HR 921, which would have implemented protections against non-indigenous overhunting of buffalo. Before this, Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano, had stated the following regarding complaints about non-indigenous hunting buffalo on native reservations:
"While I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western prairies, in its effect on the Indians, regarding it rather as a means of hastening their sense of dependence upon the products of the soil and their own labors, yet these encroachments by the non-indigenous upon the reservations set apart for the exclusive occupancy of the Indian is one prolific source of trouble in the management of the reservation Indians, and measures should be adopted to prevent such trespasses in the future, or very serious collisions may be the result."Demonstrating clearly that he saw non-indigenous poaching of bison as a problem only because it may lead to retaliation from the Indians, and on the contrary, that he saw the extermination of the buffalo as potentially beneficial in the forced assimilation of Indians.
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 and the Plains Indian were virtually inseparable."
Hunters began arriving in masses, and trains would often slow down on their routes to allow for raised hunting. Men would either climb aboard the roofs of trains or fire shots at herds from outside their windows. As a description of this from Harper's Weekly noted: "The train is 'slowed' to a speed about equal to that of the herd; the passengers get out fire-arms which are provided for the defense of the train against the Indians, and open from the windows and platforms of the cars a fire that resembles a brisk skirmish."King, Gilbert (July 17, 2012). "Where the Buffalo No Longer Roamed". Smithsonian Magazine. The Smithsonian. Retrieved April 7, 2015.
The railroad industry also wanted bison herds culled or eliminated. Herds of bison on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time. Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding through hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. As a result, bison herds could delay a train for days.
The hunter would customarily locate the herd in the early morning, and station himself about from it, shooting the animals broadside through the lungs. Head shots were not preferred as the soft lead bullets would often flatten and fail to penetrate the skull, especially if mud was matted on the head of the animal. The bison would continue to drop until either the herd sensed danger and stampeded or perhaps a wounded animal attacked another, causing the herd to disperse. If done properly a large number of bison would be felled at one time. Following up were the skinners, who would drive a spike through the nose of each dead animal with a sledgehammer, hook up a horse team, and pull the hide from the carcass. The hides were dressed, prepared, and stacked on the wagons by other members of the organization.
For a decade after 1873, there were several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, such commercial hide-hunting outfits harvesting bison at any one time, vastly exceeding the take by Native Americans or individual meat hunters. The commercial take arguably was anywhere from 2,000 to 100,000 animals per day depending on the season, though there are no statistics available. It was said that the .50 caliber (12.7mm) rifles were fired so much that buffalo hunters needed at least two or three rifles to allow the barrels cool off; The Fireside Book of Guns reports that the rifles were sometimes quenched in the winter snow to expedite the process. Dodge City saw railroad cars sent East filled with stacked hides.
The building of the railroads through Colorado and Kansas split the bison herd into two parts, the southern herd and the northern herd. The last refuge of the southern herd was in the Texas Panhandle.Page 9 T. Lindsay Baker, Billy R. Harrison, B. Byron Price, Adobe Walls
In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant "" a Federal bill to protect the dwindling bison herds, and in 1875 General Philip Sheridan pleaded to a joint session of Congress to slaughter the herds, to deprive the Indians of their source of food. By 1884, the American bison was close to extinction.
Subsequent settlers harvested bison bones to be sold for fertilizer. It was an important source of supplemental income for poorer farmers, which lasted from the early 1880s until the early 1890s.
Led by Chief Washakie, around 1,800 Shoshones in the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming started in October 1874. Going north, the men, women, and children crossed the border of the reservation. Scouts came back with news of buffalo near Gooseberry Creek. The hunters got around 125 bison. Fewer hunters left the reservation over the next two years and those who went focused on elk, deer, and other game.Patten, James I. (January–March 1993): "Last Great Hunt of Washakie and his Band". Wind River Mountaineer. Fremont County's Own History Magazine, Vol. IX, No. 1, pp. 31–34.
The final hunt of the Omaha in Nebraska took place in December 1876.Gilmore, Melvin R. (1931): "Methods of Indian Buffalo Hunts, with the Itinerary of the Last Tribal Hunt of the Omaha". Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts & Letters, Vol. 14, pp. 17–32.
Hidatsa rebel Crow Flies High and his group established themselves on the Fort Buford Military Reservation, North Dakota, at the start of the 1870s and hunted bison in the Yellowstone area until the game went scarce during the next decade.Fox, Gregory L. (1988): A Late Nineteenth Century Village of a Band of Dissident Hidatsa: The Garden Coulee Site (32WI18). Lincoln.
Indian agents, with insufficient funds, accepted long hunting expeditions of the Flathead and Pend d'Oreille to the plains in the late 1870s.Farr, William E. (Spring 2004): "Going to Buffalo. Indian Hunting Migrations across the Rocky Mountains. Part 2". Montana, the Magazine of Western History, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 26–43. pp. 39 and 41. In the early 1880s, the buffalo were gone.Farr, William E. (Spring 2004): "Going to Buffalo. Indian Hunting Migrations across the Rocky Mountains. Part 2". Montana, the Magazine of Western History, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 26–43. p. 43.
The Gros Ventre left the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana for a hunt north of Milk River in 1877.Fowler, Loretta (1987): Shared Symbols, Contested Meanings. Gros Ventre Culture and History, 1778–1984. Ithaca and London, p. 33. Chief Jerry Running Fisher enlisted as a scout at Fort Assinniboine in 1881. "His camp stayed close to the troops when they patrolled, so they hunted undisturbed by enemy tribes."Fowler, Loretta (1987): Shared Symbols, Contested Meanings. Gros Ventre Culture and History, 1778–1984. Ithaca and London, p. 63. Two years later, the buffalo were all but gone.
In June 1882, more than 600 Lakota and Yanktonai hunters located a big herd on the plains far west of the Standing Rock Agency. In this last hunt, they got around 5,000 animals.Ostler, Jeffrey (Spring 2001): "'The Last Buffalo Hunt' And Beyond. Plains Sioux Economic Strategies In The Early Reservation Period". Great Plains Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 2, p. 115.
" The country’s highest generals, politicians, and even then President Ulysses S. Grant saw the destruction of buffalo as solution to the country’s “Indian Problem".”
Even Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School and a Tenth Cavalry lieutenant in the Red River War, discussed this strategy after his retirement: "The generation of the buffalo was ordered as a military measure because it was plain that the Indians could not be controlled on their reservations as long as their greatest resource, the buffalo, were so plentiful."
The destruction of bison signaled the end of the Indian Wars, and consequently their movement towards reservations. When the Texas legislature proposed a bill to protect the bison, General Sheridan disapproved of it, stating, "These men have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last forty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary. It is a well-known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle."
Though buffalo were being slaughtered in masses, many tribes perceived the buffalo as part of the natural world—something guaranteed to them by the Creator. For some Plains Indigenous peoples, Bison are known as the first people. Many tribes did not grasp the concept of species extinction. Thus, when the buffalo began to disappear in great numbers, it was particularly harrowing to the tribes. As Crow Chief Plenty Coups described it: "When the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened. There was little singing anywhere." Spiritual loss was rampant; buffalo were an integral part of their society and they would frequently take part in ceremonies for each buffalo they killed to honor its sacrifice. To boost morale during this time, the Sioux and other tribes took part in the Ghost Dance, which consisted of hundreds of people dancing until 100 persons were lying unconscious.
Native Americans served as the caretakers of bison, so their forced movement towards bison-free reservation areas was particularly challenging. Upon their arrival to reservations, some tribes asked government officials if they could hunt cattle the way they hunted buffalo. During these cattle hunts, Plains tribes would dress up in their finery, sing bison songs, and attempt to simulate a bison hunt. These cattle hunts served as a way for the tribes to preserve their ceremonies, community, and morale. However, the U.S. government soon put a halt to cattle hunts, choosing to package the beef up for the Native Americans instead.
Corbin Sr. imported American bison from Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, Manitoba, and Texas, and donated bison to other American zoos and preserves. He also imported exotic species from Europe and Canada, including wild boar from the Black Forest of Germany.Kronenwetter From a natural level of 60 million in America, the bison population had been reduced by human activity to just 1,000 by the 1890s, and in 1904, 160 of those animals lived within Corbin Park. The Corbin herd was destroyed in the 1940s following an outbreak of brucellosis. Mary T. Kronenwetter, Corbin’s “Animal Garden”
Baynes was famous for his tame bison, and for driving around the park in a carriage pulled by a pair of bison. Amongst his published works is War Whoop and Tomahawk: The Story of Two Buffalo Calves (1929). Baynes commented:
One of the largest privately owned herds, numbering 2,500, in the US, is on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma which is owned by the Nature Conservancy. Ted Turner is the largest private owner of bison with about 50,000 on several different ranches.
The current American bison population has been growing rapidly and is estimated at 350,000 compared to an estimated 60 to 100 million in the mid-19th century. Most current herds, however, are genetically polluted or partly crossbred with cattle. Today there are only four genetically unmixed, free-roaming, public bison herds and only two that are also free of brucellosis: the Henry Mountains bison herd and the Wind Cave bison herd. A founder population of 16 animals from the Wind Cave bison herd was re-established in Montana in 2005 by the American Prairie Foundation. The herd now numbers nearly 800 and roams a grassland expanse on American Prairie.
The end of the ranching era and the onset of the natural regulation era set into motion a chain of events that have led to the bison of Yellowstone Park migrating to lower elevations outside the park in search of winter forage. The presence of wild bison in Montana is perceived as a threat to many cattle ranchers, who fear that the small percentage of bison that carry brucellosis will infect livestock and cause cows to abort their first calves. However, there has never been a documented case of brucellosis being transmitted to cattle from wild bison. The management controversy that began in the early 1980s continues with advocacy groups arguing that the herd should be protected as a distinct population segment under the Endangered Species Act.
A Native American conservation effort that has been gaining ground is the Buffalo Field Campaign. Founded in 1996 by Mike Mease, Sicango Lakota, and Rosalie Little Thunder, the Buffalo Field Campaign hopes to get bison migrating freely in Montana and beyond. The Buffalo Field Campaign challenges Montana's DOL officials, who slaughtered 1631 bison in the winter of 2007-2008 in a food search away from Yellowstone National Park. Founder Mike Mease commented in regards to DOL officials: "It's disheartening what they're doing to buffalo. It's marked with prejudice that exists from way back. I think the whole problem with white society is there's this fear of anything wild. They're so scared of anything they can't control, whereas the First Nations take pride in being part of it and protecting the wild because of its importance. Our culture is so far removed from that, and afraid of it."Jawort, Adrian (May 9, 2011). "Genocide by Other Means: U.S. Army Slaughtered Buffalo in Plains Indian Wars". Indian Country Today. Indian Country Today. Retrieved April 7, 2015.
Additionally, many smaller tribal groups aim to reintroduce bison to their native lands. The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, which was restored in 1990, has a herd of roughly 100 bison in two pastures. Similarly, the Southern Ute Tribe in Colorado has raised nearly 30 bison in a 350-acre fenced pasture.
According to Rutgers University Professor Frank Popper, bison restoration brings better meat and ecological health to the plains region, in addition to restoring bison-native American relations. However, there is a considerable risk involved with restoring the bison population: brucellosis. If bison are introduced in large numbers, the risk of brucellosis is high.
Though the number is usually several hundred, up to more than a thousand bison from the Yellowstone Park Bison Herd have been killed in some years when they wander north from the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park into private and state lands of Montana. This hunting is often done because of fears that Yellowstone bison infected with brucellosis will spread the disease to local domestic cattle. To date, no credible instance of bison-to-cattle transmission has ever been established, recorded or proven although there is some evidence of transmission between wild caribou and bison.
Every year all the bison in the Antelope Island bison herd are rounded up to be examined and vaccinated. Then, most of them are turned loose to wander Antelope Island. Approximately 100 bison are sold at an auction, and hunters are allowed to kill a half dozen bison. This hunting takes place on Antelope Island in December each year. Fees from the hunters are used to fund the maintenance of the Antelope Island State Park and the bison herd.
Hunting is also allowed every year in the Henry Mountains bison herd in Utah. The Henry Mountains herd has sometimes numbered up to 500 individuals but the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has determined that the carrying capacity for the Henry Mountains bison herd is 325 individuals. Some of the extra individuals have been transplanted, but most of them are not transplanted or sold, so hunting is the major tool used to control their population. "In 2009, 146 public once-in-a-lifetime Henry Mountain bison hunting permits were issued." Most years, 50 to 100 licenses are issued to hunt bison in the Henry Mountains.
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