Thursday, August 16, 2007

Buffalo


Here are a few more pics of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. These pics are of our hike. We went to a cowboy museum this evening. One of the most interesting and saddest things was how we destroyed the buffalo to defeat the Native Americans. The railroads gave the white men a way to get the pelts back east and from there they could be shipped to Europe.
The American Indians needed the buffalo to sustain life. They used all of the buffalo and nothing was wasted. They only killed what they needed and there were much more buffalo that they could use. Congressman James Throckmorton from Texas stated, “It would be a great step forward in the civilization of the Indians and the preservation of peace on the border if there was not a buffalo in existence.” The destruction of the buffalo had its desired effect. In three years alone, buffalo hunters killed between 4 and 5 million buffalo. Many were killed and not even used for the skin. Native people of the plains were moved to reservations or reserves. In some cases they were forced to move to avoid starvation. Their primary food source, the buffalo was no longer in existence. By 1883, only 300 buffalo in North America and Canada survived the slaughter. One general believed that the buffalo hunters “did more to defeat the Indian nations in a few years than soldiers did in 50.”

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