A Whole Bunch of Dead Indians! Wow!

[crzhrs]

<The mammoth on the other hand is gone and the white man can not be the blame>

There is ample evidence that environmental/climatic changes was also a major factor in addition to human hunting. That is a devastating combination. Which was more responsible is still not known.

[crzhrs]

<.S. And before Wolfie or CH start, I am not anti-Indian, only against the unreal, romantic aspirations of wanna-be's. If someone wants to live that life now, power to them. However, I think that one of the reasons the Indians lost was their dependence upon manufactured goods which made their life easier>

Billy:

I never accused you of being anti-Indian and you made a good point about Indians becoming reliant on manufactured goods.

Not only the goods, but the White Man who produced the goods.

It is clearly apparent that the White Man was far more of an impact on the Indian than the Indian was on the Indian, regardless of how many Indians killed each other

[crzhrs]

(I see the intent to murder especially from an infected Indian to another Indian)

You haven't heard of the British giving blankets infected with Small Pox to Indians?

[crzhrs]

<I have been doing some reading now on the Anasazi and some theories reading cannibalism and attacks by other Indians. To what extent it had on the population I have not formed an opinion but the move to cliff dwellings is used as evidence of fear of something>

Again there is evidence that climatic factors played a large part in the Anasazi abandoning their homes.

Apparently there was a severe period of time where rainfail was greatly reduced (in an already dry area) resulting in the loss of crops and starvation (possibly cannibalism, but every race has stories of cannibalism [Donner Party comes to mind]).

In addition there may have been more aggressive Indians who also were affected by the climate change who were seeking "greener pastures", like many other Indians who tried to expand their range for land and resources.

[crzhrs]

<We slaughter approximately 35,000,000 cows per year and they still keep producing>

I think the US number of cows raised each year is in the 95 million area, so killing 35M is not going to threatened the industry. I'm not a livestock raiser, but I do know that the cattle slaughtered are for profit and big business isn't going to exterminate their commodity. And with many female cows giving birth on a yearling basis the supply will never dry up . . . as long as we love eating beef and there are McDonald's, Burger Kings, Wendys et al serving billions & billions of burgers yearling there will be cows available.

However, the buffalo slaughter, while big business, was also a way to deprive the Plains Indians of their means of survival, fully supported by the US military/government.

I find it sad that buffalo, in the millions could have provided this country with all the meat we wanted and at lower costs if controlled hunting was allowed and/or buffalo raising was supported rather than import domestic cattle that are totally unsuited to survive on their own without human intervention.

Of course the "Indian Factor" played as much a part of the herds destruction as the market hunting which go hand-in-hand.

[markland]

Wolfie wrote (midst a long, worthwhile post) this:

"They had some great men and warriors but they were as naive
as a people can be." One day you fight Miles, next day you hcout/fight your own people. Whites did never do that."

Wolfie, on the contrary, I don't see the most influential/powerful Indians as naive; on the contrary, I see them as sharp people who I would not want to play poker against. There was a common misconception between both races on the lines of authority of each other's political systems which, in hindsight, does cause some to view both as naive but can be seen to be simple ignorance of the others culture or political governance.

"One day you fight Miles, next day you scout/fight your own people. Whites did never do that."

Really? Two examples pop immediately to mind: The "Galvanized Yankees" in the Civil War and Russian Liberation Army fighting for Germany late in WWII.

Note: While most will tell you that the Galvanized Yankees, officially known as United States Volunteers, enlisted strictly to fight on the frontier, that is only true for the Second thru Fifth U.S.V. The 1st U.S.V. was first organized and used in the Eastern Theater, mostly Virginia and actually skirmished with soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Billy

[Dark Cloud]

While for a brief period there were a ton of bison, the standing assumption of 60 million seems bogus, given the absolute absence of such presence within the fossil record. The bison and passenger pigeon only flourished after the keystone species - Indians - vanished due to disease.

Until the horse, it would be easier for Sioux to invent the Maxim gun than to sucessfully organized a regular - much less yearly - use of these buffalo jumps, which must have crusted nostrils for some time after and kept beasts away.

[crzhrs]

<The bison and passenger pigeon only flourished after the keystone species - Indians - vanished due to disease>

Therefore there went enough Indians to affect those animals' numbers?

Just looked up Passenger Pigeons . . . it's not a pretty description of how they became extinct . . . even though some enacted laws it did nothing to stop the mass slaughter.

Apparently they could never reproduce in captivity due to being a "gregarious" animal . . . needing thousands to ensure a viable population.

Market hunting doomed the pigeons as it almost doomed the buffalo (habitat destruction was a factor, but not the main reason)

[Dark Cloud]

I again direct everyone to read "1491" by Charles Mann. When the Spanish crossed from Florida to Texas nobody noticed a single bison, yet tons of annoyed villages and crops. A few decades later, when the French came South, tons of bison, no people in number to speak of.

It's not how the pigeon died off that's the issue, but how such a clueless animal could explode in population without natural predation.

[AZ Ranger]

DC were talking about an animal that was shot from trains in large numbers not the brightest animal on the block. I would agree that the high population estimate does not fit with the take claimed in reducing the population. Maybe the population was closer to 10 million or less rather than 30-60 million.

When our buffalo run off our ranch they run to the same place and we herd them back the same way. They could at least make it interesting if they formed a new plan of escape. All we have to do is guide the lead cow and the rest follow.

AZ Ranger

[AZ Ranger]

Jun 29, 2009 8:45:00 GMT -6 crzhrs said:

(I see the intent to murder especially from an infected Indian to another Indian)

You haven't heard of the British giving blankets infected with Small Pox to Indians?

Conz specified on the plains so I am not sure British blankets count there.

Again my point was Indian killing Indian being greater than Indian killing white so the British blanket has nothing to do with my statement. I was just pointing out to Wolfie he needed to define the parameters total numbers to outright reject Conz's on the Plains statement. In this current age some would blame some deaths on those that sold the guns to the Indians.

AZ Ranger

[conz]

Jun 29, 2009 10:39:14 GMT -6 crzhrs said:

Of course the "Indian Factor" played as much a part of the herds destruction as the market hunting which go hand-in-hand.

Hmmm...you don't think the buffalo would have been hunted to extinction even if the Indians hadn't been there at all?

The bison had to go every bit as much as the Indian had to give up their freedom in order to civilize this land, right?

We do have commercial buffalo meat today, of course, but they are not nearly as efficient as cattle are at producing meat. Civilization depends upon efficiency, of course.

Clair

[conz]

Yeah, I've been outta town and very busy...but you guys are having a grand discussion without me!

Here's a note to ponder out of Dr. Pekka Hamalainen's book on the history of the Comanche:

"Based on these figures, the Comanches and their allies could kill approximately 280,000 bison a year without depleting their herds. Although substantial on first glance, the number suggests a startling possibility: the Comanches were off balance with the bison herds for much of the early nineteenth century, gradually eroding the ecological foundation of their way of life. It has been estimated that full-time plains hunters needed a yearly average of 6.5 bison per person for food, shelter, and clothing, which means that the Comanches and their allies wee killing approximately 175,000 buffalos a year for subsistence alone..."

"In the early nineteenth century, their commercial harvest probably rarely exceeded 25,000 animals, but their hunting practices seriously aggravated the damage. Like most Plains Indians, Comanches did their market hunting in winter, when the robes were the thickest and most valuable, and they preferred killing two to five year old cows for their thin, easily processes skins. Since bison cows produce their first calves at the age of three or four and their gestation period usually extends from mid-July to early April, Comanches slaughtered disproportionate numbers of pregnant cows, thus impairing the herds' reproductive capacity..."

"Making matters worse, Comanches' commercial ambitions induced them to open their hunting grounds to outsiders...Together with Osages, the removed Indians did most of their hunting in the prime bison range between the upper Canadian and Red rivers, in the heart of eastern Comancheria. By 1841 the region's bison population were thinning rapidly."

Well before the white men got there in any numbers, eh?

But are these "facts?" They are printed in a book...<g>

What are you to believe?

Clair

[BrokenSword]

Wolf,

I realize there is a language barrier, of sorts, between yourself and most other members here on the board. Apologies for that - by anyone - are unnecessary, but it will surely cause a degree of miscommunication when discussing historical facts, and much more so when communicating concepts of how those facts join together to form a larger and clearer picture. In rereading my previous post, I see where I poorly worded what I was saying about the horse’s introduction into the world of the Indian and created a misleading, in fact incorrect, statement. For that I DO offer my apology to you.

I will also say, at this time, that the various Indian tribes existing across the American Continents were highly diversified in their languages, social structures, religions and areas of settlement. Those settlements ranged from small bands of hunter gathers living in mud huts or simple thatched roof, open walled structures along rivers and streams, to grand civilizations with cities, economic systems of commerce, methods of agriculture, arts, mathematics and sciences, laws and feats of engineering and architecture which were the equal of (and in some cases superior to) anything achieved or existing in the Old World. The world from which the (as I said earlier) so-called white man came.

‘White man’ is simply the common reference name coming to mean - anyone from the Old World. Mostly people from Europe, but Indians also called some Old World individuals ‘Black White Man’ when speaking, obviously, of those persons whose racial heritage was African. Differences of race between people are only of superficial physical appearance, or the results of artificially imposed methods of social interactions from many centuries of evolving civilizations. That is: cooperative problem solving mechanisms, and the communication tools required to achieve them.

The very large majority of people from any area of the world are the same at their core. We share the same basic desires: to survive in whatever natural environment we live in - AND - to improve the condition of our lives, the protection of our off-spring and the preservation of our own particular societal structures which greatly improve the chances of achieving those goals through the strength of the whole over the individual. Mostly my opinion, but that‘s how I see it.

When resources become too few in one area, or population exceeds the resources, people will generally move away (in whole or in part) in search of some place that has more of their necessities available. An immigration of people, even over a long period of time, should not be confused with a nomadic life-style. Ladonna is entirely correct about the Sioux (actually the proper name is the ‘Dakota’) having an established presence on the Great Plains prior to the 18th Century, and there is no better expert on this board than she, when speaking of the Dakota people’s history. You are correct in that the first horse was introduced to the Indians and the Great Plains before 1750, (from whatever source the horse originally came) and for some decades prior to the 18th Century.

My attempted contribution to the historical ground work for the direction this thread has taken was that horse ownership became WIDESPREAD among Indian peoples in the first half of the 1700s, and BY 1750 the horse was a common enough possession among Indians, so that they migrated onto the Great Plains in greater numbers than had ever lived there before. Greater numbers than could have survived there before the horse.

The horse was, for those people, a technological leap. The horse became more than a simple means of easier transportation. It became an essential part of their life. It caused an evolutionary, indeed a revolutionary, change in their culture, and the survival of that culture depended upon the horse more than any other thing. The horse changed the Great Plains from a land mostly devoid of human beings and the relatively few who were there, as subsistence level dwellers along rivers and streams, static in their areas of occupation, to a place of large bands of nomadic hunters following the herds of buffalo and seeking grazing land and water for their own herds of horses.

It was a new culture armed with the ‘technological’ means to roam freely over great distances. Yes, the tipi, as a portable dwelling place, was known earlier than 1700, but after that time it became the essential and almost exclusive one. With the horse as a transport vehicle, capable of carrying far heavier loads than humans or the small dogs Indians had, the tipi became much larger than its forerunner. Rather than it being a tent sized portable shelter it became a truly mobile home. More in the way of essentials and creature comforts included, and the horse or horses served as the pickup truck to haul it all around.

[The first automobile was actually created in the 1860s, but ownership of automobiles did not become widespread until the early decades of the 20th Century, and thus created what some have termed ‘the mobile society’ of the United States. A society that certainly did not exist in its present form prior to 1900. A trip from sea to sea in 1850 took about five months, in 1950 it took about five days.]

Indian raids on the villages of other Indian tribes often had the sole purpose of stealing horses, rather than killing members of the other tribe. Horses increased a man’s wealth by way of the number he owned. Successfully stealing horses from an enemy or rival tribe was also a path to increased standing for a man within his community. However, there is also evidence that tribes peacefully cooperated with each other in the select interbreeding of their horses in order to improve the quality of the herds each possessed.

When people migrate to areas new to them, they almost invariably collide with people already occupying those places. People of those pre-existing societies almost invariably fight against the wave of immigrants, and the societal changes they bring when they begin to settle. There is nothing unique to the conflict on the Great Plains in that regard. The Roman Empire was whittled away by waves of migrating ‘barbarians’ from beyond its borders. Just as the Romans themselves had spread over much of the Mediterranean world, some centuries earlier, by subjugating the various peoples living there, and as had Alexander and his Greek army over a greater part of the world before that. African tribes battled each other, and still do, in wars of conquest and territorial tribal rule. In Asia and the Pacific islands it was the same story. Almost all of them were in quest of the same thing in the end: increasing wealth, security and the natural resources to improve or enhance the living conditions of their lives and cultures.

The strong and more technologically equipped generally displace or repel the weak. Conquistadors ran riot over Indian cultures and civilizations south of today’s U.S./Mexican border. Indians moving out unto the Plains displaced small groups already occupying desired lands and the natural resources they contained. Waves of immigrants from Europe (predominately) displaced and conquered the tribes of the Great Plains, just as many of those tribes had done to local peoples a century or so before.

The justice or injustice of it all is a discussion that runs parallel to the history of events and its timeline, is rife with ethnic pride and prejudices, and difficult to wade through without imposing today’s values and perceptions onto people of a different time and who held different values and views of the world around them. As with the case of stealing horses, an honored achievement to some then, but a recognized crime by all people today.

We really don’t know that the nomadic tribes of the Great Plains had achieved a harmonious balance with nature. My belief is still that there just weren’t enough of them in their time to do damage on the scale we have seen in recent years. Again, the time of the Great Plains nomadic bison hunting horse culture was a historical blink of the eye. Left alone and allowed to grow in population, and over the course of time, they may very well have hunted the buffalo and other game to extinction or nearly so. We just don’t know and it’s purely a matter of conjectural opinion as to what may have transpired in this hemisphere had the ‘white man’ never made an appearance.

But the white man did. What has happened has happened. And here we are today. The historical truth of it all can be only one thing. Myth, legend, ethnic pride and prejudice as well as bald faced lies have all been dumped into the story, and have contributed to a popular and skewed understanding of our histories.

Michael

[BrokenSword]

Cattle are domesticated animals and buffalo are not. Without domestication, I don’t see how the American bison could have been utilized as a renewable and reliable food source as was the beef cow or even the hog. No wild game animal can be. Bison, elk and even deer worked well for the relatively small bands of nomads following the migrating herds, but for the rapidly growing city dwelling population in this country, maybe not so well, or at all. Zebras are much like horses but again, they are not domesticated and can‘t be made to serve the useful purposes that horses do.

Cattleman Charles Goodnight, and a few others, attempted to domesticate and raise buffalo for commercial purposes in the 1880s and failed. Goodnight, at least, also attempted to interbreed them with domesticated cattle, creating what he named the cattleo. That attempt failed as well. It wasn’t for not trying that cattle rather than buffalo became the meat which dominated at the butchers’ shops. It was, in the end, cattle and not buffalo that were suitable to the food production needs of a rapidly growing nation.

Some modern day, and rather experimental raising of bison for commercial purposes is underway, but it all amounts to rather small scale operations with limited success. So far anyway.

M