Fleckvieh Forum
by Larry H. Maxey, founder and superintendent, NAILE Fullblood Simmental Shows
Our Pioneers — The American Bison
The near extinction of the American bison in the mid to late 1800s was caused by many factors. In hindsight, none were justifiable. This horrific blemish on our nation’s history cannot be dismissed, diminished, or rightfully rationalized. Equally, the negative impact on the survival of Native Americans, who had existed in a favorable symbiosis with these great beasts for millennia, was profound.
The buffalo numbers were staggering with estimates in the tens of millions. Their range was over several hundred million acres. This American phenomenon rivaled numbers seen in the African savannah.
Christopher Knowlton, author of Cattle Kingdom , described the observations of Thomas Farnham while on the Santa Fe trail in 1839, taking three days to pass through a single buffalo herd covering a 45-mile distance: “At one point he could see bison for 15 miles in every direction, suggesting a herd that encompassed 1,350 square miles.” In 1859, Luke Voorhees claimed to have traveled for 200 miles through a single herd somewhere along the border of Colorado and Nebraska. And a dozen years later, Colonel R. I. Dodge passed through a herd along the Arkansas River that was 25 miles wide and 50 miles long.
It is too painful to describe the process used for the man-made mass extinction of the American bison. William T. Hornaday, in his 1889 book The Extermination of the American Bison, blamed the near extinction on five causes: the hunters’ preference for female hides, “phenomenal” stupidity of these animals, their indifference to man, the arrival of breach-loading rifles, and contagious cattle diseases. Man’s killing spree lasted until the spring of 1884. “When the hunting syndicates went out that year, as usual, to shoot the bison, there were none to be found.”
By 1902, only two dozen bison remained in the US, which were protected in Yellowstone National Park. The demise of the American bison was an event of apocalyptic proportions that will live in infamy!
Bison bones deposited along the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks in eastern Montana. Photo originally printed in the publication Sport Among the Rockies: The Record of a Fishing and Hunting Trip in NorthWestern Montana, by the Scribe [Charles Spencer Francis] (Troy, NY, 1889). Image courtesy of the Montana State Library.
Several pieces for this column have noted how the removal of the American bison created a vacuum in the vast territories they once occupied. It didn’t take long for that vacuum to be filled by cattle. During the Civil War, wild Longhorn cattle, essentially left on their own, exploded in numbers. By the war’s end, the economies of the northern cities like New York were booming due in large part to wartime spending. With a rising standard of living, people moved up the food chain to beef as their meat preference, displacing pork as the primary protein source. With this came soaring beef prices, and its relative scarcity in the East was a major contributor. In Texas, the opposite was true. A steer worth four dollars in Texas would sell for 40 or 50 in the Northeast.
Prior to the arrival of the railroads, trail drives were the only option to move the cattle throughout the country. Some of those endeavors have been covered in this column. However, until the arrival of railroads, the destination for cattle drives were mainly North and West with only scattered efforts to move the cattle East for many reasons. With the railroad, that all changed. The stage was now set for the creation of cattle towns, which will be covered in the upcoming September edition of the Register .
Editor’s note: This is the forty-sixth in the series Our Pioneers.
Is there a Simmental pioneer who you would like to see profiled in this series? Reach out to Larry Maxey or the editor to submit your suggestions:
