“A
cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell – death-wind for
my people.”
--Sitting
Bull
The post-Civil War western army’s conspiracy regarding the “Indian Problem” encompassed the extermination of the buffalo. Which involved the belief if the Indians’ sustenance was taken away, they would be forced onto reservations and reduced to relying on the government to care for them. Their independence served as a threat to further colonization, the Euro-Americans’ right to “Manifest Destiny.” The army made an attempt at killing the buffalo, but the numbers exceeded their capabilities. The military enlisted wealthy men to hunt the buffalo for sport. The army hunted the buffalo to feed the troops. Buffalo hides became a commodity to be used for the industrialized market which ended up with the recruitment of hide hunters to do the dirty work of eliminating the buffalo. Various tribes raised up in anger and fought the military and white buffalo hunters. Eventually, the buffalo were almost completely erased from the vast open prairies.
Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall claimed Generals
William T. Sherman and Phillip Sheridan rallied for the elimination of the
buffalo as a way of gaining control over the Plains Indians. The aforementioned
served a key role in the slaughter of the buffalo. Other military officers and
soldiers went against their plan and worked to end the slaughter (Smits, 1994).
Sherman succeeded Grant as commanding general in 1869, a
role he maintained until he retired in 1883. Sherman learned from fighting in
the Civil War that the best way to defeat the enemy was to destroy their
ability to provide for their people. His long march of slashing and burning
from Atlanta to the ocean served the final blow and won the Civil War. He
acclaimed that “must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of
war” (Smits, 1994, page 314). He also believed that railroads served the military
immensely by moving troops, ammunition, and supplies. According to Sherman, to
service the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific Railroads the military must
exterminate the buffalo. General Sherman acclaimed “as long as Buffalo are up
on the Republican the Indians will go there. I think it would be wise to invite
all the sportsmen of England and America there this fall for a grand Buffalo
hunt, and make one grand sweep of them all. Until the Buffalo and consequently
Indians are out from between the roads we will have collisions and trouble”
(Smits, 1994, page 314). Serious attempts of carrying out Sherman’s proposal
were carried out by the military.
Sherman and Sheridan sent letters of introduction to
American citizens and foreigners regarding possible hunts. They were promised
supplies, equipment, military escorts and knowledgeable scouts and other forms
of assistance. The military leaders looked forward to rubbing elbows with the prominent and rich. A
group of wealthy businessmen visited Fort McPherson in 1871 to join a hunting
party as Sheridan’s guests. Two companies of the Fifth Cavalry provided them
with escorts. Any guest who wished were permitted to use army guns. The party
killed over 600 buffalo, they saved the tongues (known delicacy) and choice cuts
and left the rest to rot on the plains. Many other groups of wealthy men
participated in additional hunts and slaughtered many buffalo.
Congress did not want the military, ten full regiments,
to focus to the extermination of the buffalo. The soldiers slaughtered buffalo
whenever and wherever it was practical. Military officials wanted the Indians
to become civilized and Christianized. The military believed the Indian people
respected martial power. Sherman said “if he [the Plains Indian] does not now
give up his cruel and destructive habits, I see no other way to save the lives
and property of our people, than to punish him until peace becomes a desirable
object” (Smits, 1994, page 317). The military believed the buffalo and the
Plains Indians were inseparable.
Buffalo were used for shooting practice. The hunts broke
the soldiers’ boredom, provided them with practice with aiming and shooting and
they fine tuned their scouting abilities. Military officials granted hunting
passes to hunt buffalo to supplement the government rations. Many Native
Americans and white people considered the buffalo tongue a delicacy and many
craved them. Each buffalo weighed approximately 2000 pounds, which could
provide a lot of meat for the soldiers.
The Plains Indians used every part of the buffalo they
killed. The meat from the buffalo provided them with sustenance. Tanned hides
with fur removed served many purposes: cradles; men and women’s leg coverings;
tipi covers; mocassins; saddle blankets; gun carriers; pouches; different types
of bags; and for burial coverings. Rawhide had various uses from drumskins,
ropes, to saddles. Horns served useful purposes such as for cups, spoons,
ladles, arrow points, and bowls. The bones were used as knives, axes,
arrowheads and scrapers. The Plains Indians utilized sinew as thread for
clothing, mocassins, and bindings (Goble, 1996). The waste of the white people
angered them when they left many buffalo to rot on the plains.
At Fort Cobb, soldiers used cannons when the beasts ran
in a stampede near the fort. They shot cannons into the herds of buffalo. They
shot the buffalo by the hundreds. The weather got warm and the stench from the
rotting carcasses almost drove the troops from the fort. The soldiers were
ordered to haul the carcasses away and burn them (Smits, 1994).
During the Medicine Lodge Treaty Council in 1867, the
Kiowa Chief Satanta complained about the buffalo being slaughtered. He said “A
long time ago this land belonged to our fathers, but when I go up to the river,
I see a camp of soldiers, and they are cutting my trees down, or killing my
buffalo. I don’t like that, and when I see it my heart feels like bursting with
sorrow” (Smits, 1994, page 321). Satana witnessed the infantry, who escorted
the peace commissioners from Fort Larned to the Medicine Lodge Creek, when they
slaughtered buffalo along the march. The soldier hunters stopped and cut the
tongues from the buffalo and sliced rump steaks from the buffalo they killed and
left the rest to rot. They continued their blood shed during the entire march.
“Has the white man become a child, that he should recklessly kill and not eat?
When the red men slay game, they do so that they may live and not starve”
complained Satana (Smits, 1994, page 321). Before the treaty council, the
military officials were hopeful the buffalo were being hunted to extinction.
Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, commander of the
Department of the Missouri which covered Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New
Mexico, was stationed at Fort Dodge in April of 1867. He warned Arapaho chiefs,
including Little Raven that they may need to find another means of surviving
because game has become scarce. They needed to befriend the white man so they
would take care of them if necessary.
Sherman joined the Peace Commission for the Fort Laramie
Treaty of April 1868. The treaty granted the Great Sioux Reservation the right
to hunt on any lands north of North Platte and on the Republican Fork and on
the Smokey Hill River where buffalo roamed. Sherman opposed their right to
hunt.
On February 29, 1868, Sheridan assumed command of the
Department of the Missouri and was stationed at Fort Leavenworth. He brought
attention to the problem about “Indian depredations” in relation to the raids
by the southern plains’ warriors. They were not confined to the reservation. They
were permitted to hunt in various areas according to the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
Sheridan’s answer to the problem involved the killing of the Indians’ horses
and buffalo. Lietenant Colonel Luther P. Bradley received strict orders to set
up camp near buffalo herds. “Ordered to the forks of the Republican to make
permanent camp to kill all the buffalo we find, and drive the Arapahoes and
Cheyennes south, the Sioux north” (Smits, 1994, page 323). He and his troops
carried out their mission with gusto but only killed a few buffalo. The buffalo
had moved to another location.
Sheridan’s confidence dwindled when he saw the massive
amount of buffalo. During the 1868-69 campaign he saw north of the Union
Pacific Railroad huge herds. He saw at least 200,000 in one day. The amount of
buffalo he viewed could last the Native Americans at least 20 years. Other
officers estimated the numbers ranged to at least ten billion animals. Sheridan
had to face the dilemma and he realized his small army could not wipe out the
animals. The troops resumed to hunt the beasts to supplement the government
rations.
An attempt to save the buffalo occurred when Edward W.
Wynkeep, agent for the Cheyennes provided Henry Bergh, the president of the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with a reason to save the
buffalo from the white hunters. He told Henry the most prominent reason for the
hostilities of the Indian people was the killing of the buffalo. Little Robe of
the Cheyennes told representative in Washington that they don’t kill the white
farmer’s ox. The killing of the buffalo secured an incentive for war.
Some army officials such as Custer boasted about how he
could wipe out a lot of Indians with just his seventh cavalry. Captain William
J. Fetterman bragged about his prowess “give me eighty men and I would ride
through the whole Sioux nation” (Smits, 1994, page 325). Both of their military
careers were ill-fated. It did appear foolish to some of the military officials
that the army had to resort to killing buffalo to defeat Indians and the
killing of the buffalo did not serve as a noble pastime.
The buffalo robe served as a source of warmth and style
for the eastern United States, Europe and the west. The buffalo were usually
killed in the fall and winter months when the fur was the thickest. From 1830
to 1870 the buffalo trade flourished for the Plains Indians. People also used
buffalo hides for mattresses, coats, blankets and any purpose which required
warmth and comfort. Approximately 200,000 buffalo robes entered the market each
year usually supplied by Native American and Metis hunters of the Great Plains.
Native Americans traded hides for tobacco, sugar, whiskey, bracelets, coffee
beans and sometimes guns. One of the robes would retail in the east from $5. to
$50. The buffalo would have lasted for years without danger of extinction if
the perfect storms did not hit the Plains. The first storm involved the
introduction of the transcontinental railroad which served as cheap and quick
transportation and the second storm involved the commercial tanneries in the
eastern portion of the country made a discovery of buffalo for industry
purposes (Rinella, 2008).
The answer for the “Indian problem” revealed itself for
Sheridan as a result of the industrialized companies’ discovery. The
Pennsylvania tannery in 1871 created a method of converting buffalo hides into
commercial leather which was used for harnesses and machine belting needed by
industrializing America. The hides sold for $1. to $3. Hide hunters flocked to
western Kansas where the buffalo were plentiful. The fate of the southern herd was
sealed.
In the spring of 1874, buffalo runners left Fort Dodge to
open a post in the Texas Panhandle at Adobe Walls by the Canadian River.
Hundreds of angry Comanches and Cheyennes ambushed the post on June 27, 1874.
Thomas A. Osborn, Governor of Kansas, pleaded with General John Pope, commander
of the Department of the Missouri, to send soldiers to the fort to rescue the
buffalo runners. Pope refused and the reason he gave for his refusal involved
the fact that the post sold whiskey, guns and ammunition not only to the
buffalo runners but also to the Indians. These weapons were used for the ambush
and he also did not want to enable the buffalo runners to unlawfully intrude on
Indian reservations. Pope’s refusal infuriated Sheridan. He wanted the southern
herd’s elimination. In order to accomplish this, was to end tribal treaty
rights to hunt (Smits, 1994).
The U.S Government usually did not make an attempt to
protect Indian land from white invaders. The Indians often took matters into
their own hands. The Comanches vigilantly fought and killed many buffalo
runners. They scalped them and mutilated
their bodies. Some of the dead were displayed with many bullet holes and arrows
stuck in them. The hide hunters worked on driving the Indians away from their
hunting areas. Paranoia rose amongst some of the hide hunters (Rinella, 2008).
President Grant went back on his word to use the army to
keep hide hunters off the Indian reservations. He did promise a group of
Southern Cheyennes and Arapahoes that he would keep the interlopers off their
land. On September 30, 1874, as a result
of the white invasion, John D. Miles, the tribes’ agent, sent a letter to the
commissioner of Indian Affairs with a compilation of the grievances of the
tribes. The plea was ignored. Instead the army decided to support the efforts
of the hide hunters.
The army posts on the southern plains provided ammunition
to the hide hunters. They also equipped the hunters with protection, supplies,
markets, storage and shipping facilities. Near Fort Griffin a settlement grew
up from a small village to a town that became the main shipping and supply
depot for the buffalo hunters in West Texas. Because of the army’s protection,
the hide hunters expanded their posts to Forts Dodge, Concho and Richardson.
Due to Sheridan’s leadership the buffalo were
exterminated from the southern herd or the beasts were driven away from Indian
hunting grounds. He organized a campaign that involved five military regiments.
They attacked hostile bands of Indians in the Texas Panhandle. The Red River
War of 1874 resulted in the final conquest of the southern plains tribes. One of
the commanders during the war was Colonel Nelson A. Miles. Miles went on
further campaigns and wiped out a lot of Native Americans and buffalo near the
Washita River. “This might seem like cruelty and wasteful extravagance but the
buffalo, like the Indian, stood in the way of civilization and in the path of
progress, and the decree had gone forth that they must both give way… The same
territory… was supporting those vast herds of wild game, is now covered with
domestic animals which afford the food supply for hundreds of millions of people
in civilized countries” (Smits, 1994, page 333).
The question came up why the army could not subdue the
Native Americans without killing their food supply by the federal government.
Sheridan went undercover and gave covert orders. He ordered verbally his
military commanders to continue to attack various Indian communities while the
buffalo continued to be annihilated by soldiers and hide hunters.
With
the help of the army, the buffalo runners managed to destroy the entire
southern herd by 1879. The termination of the buffalo occurred on the central
plains during the early 1870s, and the destruction of the buffalo occurred on
the northern plains by the early 1880s. Granted all buffalo were not destroyed
because they still exist today.
The
culmination of destruction and takeover of Native American land took the shape
of many forms from the killing of the buffalo to outright murder of the
indigenous people. Treaties were put into place and the Native Americans were
made to believe they would be protected from white settler intrusion. The
Euro-Americans continued to take their land from them no matter what laws
existed. Some people stood up for their rights while others only wanted them
terminated or reduced to beggars. Many Indian warriors fought long and hard to
protect their rights to land, hunting to feed their communities and for their
mere existence.
