Bison once numbered nearly 40 million and stretched across the vast majority of North America. They were found as far as Georgia, up to New York, and across California. 500 years ago, however, they experienced what was nearly the beginning of the end. Bison were extirpated from areas east of the Mississippi River as native land management practices were replaced by intensive slave driven agriculture. Little is written about the East Coast extirpation of the bison. Perhaps it happened so slowly that the scale of destruction was not evident, or perhaps the pressure caused herds to migrate away from areas of danger. I would love to know more.

The well-documented slaughter of bison west of the Mississippi coincided with the construction of the railroads. First, bison meat was used to feed the railroad workers. 8 pounds of bison per day was a typical ration. The rails allowed the hide and tongue hunters to come in. A salted bison tongue might fetch a dollar a piece at market. Quite a bit in 1870s money. The rampant slaughter left plenty of bison bones lying on the plains, easy for the pickings. Bone collectors gathered and sold these for fertilizer while killing any bison they saw, only to let them rot and come back to pick up a year later. The final straw was the government slaughter of herds in order to make natives reliant on the government handouts.