The Collapse of the Bison Population in the US: Evaluating the Legislation of HR. 921

Over the course of the 19th century a significant environmental cataclysm befell the United States’ Great Plains. The bison which roamed the plains for millennia went from a population ranging between 30-50 million in the early 1800s to less than 1,000 at the turn of the century. Multiple historiographical traditions exist in attempting to discern what occurred and what ultimately spelled the death knell for the great buffalo herds, however, the importance of consulting primary sources can still elucidate greater understanding in comprehending the complexity of the rapid downfall of the bison.

Roy Williams explains.

Indians hunting the bison by Karl Bodmer.

For the last century, images of bison carcasses and skeletons piled high have haunted the memories of American conservationists. Artistic renderings such as American Progress by John Gast which shows the steady retreat of the bison and the Native Americans who depended upon it at the march of civilization as a hallmark of the ideology of manifest destiny. Artistic renderings also show the wanton mass killing of bison from settlers shooting the animals from trains for cheap thrills. What then caused this massive collapse of the bison populations? The answer, like most of is buried within a labyrinth of complex interactions.

Popular mythology has created a narrative built upon the legacy of the Indian Wars and the genocidal heritage of United States policy towards Native Americans in arguing that the Reconstruction era United States government willfully and intentionally sought to destroy the bison as a form of ecocide and biological warfare against Great Plains Native Americans tribes in attempting to cut off their primary form of subsistence and force them into state sponsored subservience in reservations. While Native Americans of the Great Plains had always depended on the bison as a supplemental source of food, before the introduction of European horses and diseases, they primarily depended upon agriculture. The addition of European diseases such as smallpox forced Great Plains Native Americans to adapt and reconfigure their way of life to nomadic sole dependence upon the bison for subsistence, trade, and political autonomy. This change put additional stress on an animal population which already had to contend with the dynamic and volatile nature of the Great Plains environment. Each year natural factors such as wolf predation, disease, and drought significantly reduced bison numbers. The introduction of European horses also dramatically increased hunting efficiency leading to greater harvests and additional pressure on herd populations. These numbers could rebound with steady levels of human predation but could not endure multiple upheavals which would ultimately lead to their near extinction.

Phillip Sheridan

One of the most frequently cited primary source examples of United States government complicity in destroying the bison is the 1875 speech of Phillip Sheridan before the Texas legislature. Supposedly, the Texas legislature was considering conservation measures and protections for bison to reduce the number of market hunters who were driving the southern herd to near extinction. Phillip Sheridan is cited as appearing before the legislature to oppose these protections arguing that,

 “These men [buffalo hunters] have done more in the last two years, and will do in the next year, more to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular Army has done in the last thirty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary; it is well known that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. For the sake of lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle and festive cowboy, who follows the hunter as a second forerunner of an advanced civilization.”

The only problem with this primary source rests in the reality that Phillip Sheridan never appeared before the Texas Legislature in 1875 because there never was any consideration by the Texas legislature to protect the southern bison herd. No archival data supports this primary source as being legitimate, the only appearance of this source rests in the memoirs of a hide hunter named John Cooke, with The Border and the Buffalo multiple years after the supposed encounter. More troubling however, is the reality of another primary source which flies directly in the face of historiographical traditions claiming a conspiratorial link between United States government’s policy against the bison.

Legislation

The legislation of HR. 921 stands as one of the most important primary sources in reconsidering the collapse of the bison populations. If the United States government intentionally committed a conspiracy of destroying the bison to force Great Plains into subservience on the reservation system, why did both the House of Representatives and Senate of the United States of America in 1874 introduce a bill to regulate the hunting of bison only to Native Americans? Congressman Fort of Illinois introduced the bill with the goal of stopping the early extermination of the bison, recognizing that bison were “killed every year in utter wantonness without any object whatever except to destroy them.”  The fact that H.R. 921 passed in the House with a tally of 132 ayes and the nays remaining uncounted, shows that there was ample interest in protecting the bison from the onslaught of illegal hide hunters. H.R. 921 was designed to protect bison and give favorable hunting rights to Native Americans, stating, “That it shall hereafter be unlawful for any person who is not an Indian to kill, wound, or in any manner destroy any female buffalo, of any age.”

H.R. 921 ultimately failed to pass, dying at President Grant’s desk due to a pocket veto, however the significance of its passage in both the house of Representatives and Senate cannot be understated. The most likely culprit of the collapse of the bison of the Great Plains rests in the ascendancy of market hunting. For a time, it was profitable to hunt bison on a vast industrial scale. These hunts prioritized female bison for their tongues and robes providing the best meat and the best quality leather for production. The industrial revolution occurring in the east fueled the need for more leather products putting unsustainable strain on the bison populations. For a time, bison boomtowns popped up overnight in the northwest territories trading goods at extortionate rates to Native Americans who had honed and perfected their hunting techniques and could trade bison materials for these goods. This interaction in addition to the larger share of market hunting by white hide hunters ultimately spelled doom for the bison populations. The reason for this conclusion is not revolutionary in nature, the bison followed the same trends as any other animal in the United States that experienced the pressures of market hunting. The beaver of the northeast and northwestern United States was reduced to virtual extinction from market hunting. The whitetail deer and alligator of the southeast were also led to near extinction from the combined forces of deforestation and market hunting which prioritized meat and leather over the preservation of animal species. The collapse of the bison provides a cautionary tale of the dangers that unregulated capitalism can inflict upon the natural environment. Without the presence of clear and strict conservation measures, environmental cataclysm can and will occur again. Rather than being a story of intentional and willful political malevolence, the tale of the bison represents the dangers that unregulated capitalism can inflict upon nature.

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References

Dodge, Richard Irving. The Hunting Grounds of the Great West. 1877. The Newberry Library. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://www.americanwest.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Detail/the-hunting-grounds-of-the-great-west.-a-description-of-the-plains-game-and-indians-of-the-great-north-american-desert/4455563?item=4455597.

Flores, Dan. The Natural West. University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.

Gast, John. American Progress. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn, New York: Autry Museum of the American West, 1872.

Geist, Valerius. Buffalo Nation. Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 1996.

Isenberg, Andrew C. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Kindy, Dave. “How Buffalo Bill and a Civil War General saved Yellowstone National Park.” The Washington Post, March, 6, 2022.

Krech, Shepard. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York, New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.

Library of Congress. The Far West-Shooting Buffalo on the Line of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad. 1871. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington D.C. Accessed July 2, 2024. https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3c33890/?st=image.

Meriwether, Lewis, and William Clark, Jonathan Carver, and Alexander Mackenzie. The Travels of Capts. Lewis & Clarke. Philadelphia: Hubbard Lester, 1809.

Protection of Buffalo. HR 921. 43rd Cong., 1st Sess., Congressional Record, Pt.3: 2104-2109.

Ramsay, Crooks. Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. 1849, 31sr Cong., 1st sess. (Serial 550), 1022.

Sandoz, Mari. The Buffalo Hunters. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska, 1978.

Wade, Mason. The Journals of Francis Parkman. vol 2 New York: Harper, 1947.

Consider the Birds: When Bipartisanship Took Flight in the USA

A bipartisan bill that has lasted over 100 years was signed in 1918 in America. The bill was America’s earliest wildlife conservation life and has saved the lives of millions of birds. Will McLean Greeley, author a new book on the subject, explains the important role of Senator George P. McLean in its creation.

Will’s book is A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington, Senator George P. McLean, Birdman of the Senate. Available here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Senator George P. McLean.

Imagine Democratic President Joe Biden at a White House bill signing ceremony handing the signatory pen to Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.  They then shake hands, celebrating a shared legislative accomplishment that would endure for over one hundred years.  That’s essentially what happened on July 3, 1918, when Democratic President Woodrow Wilson and Senator George P. McLean (R-CT) unveiled the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, America’s earliest and most important wildlife conservation law.   The MBTA, which is still in effect today, has saved millions if not billions of birds from senseless killing and likely prevented the extinction of entire bird species.

My new book A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington, Senator George P. McLean, Birdman of the Senate is about the struggle to lead societal change, exploring the intersection of culture and politics.  While the book offers fresh insights into a neglected milestone in conservation history, it also contains a rare and intriguing example of bipartisanship, that elusive ideal that polls show most Americans desire but whose leaders seem hopelessly unable to deliver.   What, if anything, can we learn about bipartisanship from the MBTA, when President Wilson and Connecticut Republican George P. McLean overcame their past enmity and found common ground to save the birds?

From Hunter to Conservationist

When Senator George P. McLean came to Washington in 1911 the protection of birds was his top priority.  A hunter in his youth, McLean renounced the sport as an adult because of declining bird populations and rising avian extinctions.  Conservation historians refer to the latter half of the nineteenth century as the “Age of Extermination,” when birds and other wildlife were on a fast track to eradication.  Early settlers of North America had viewed birds and other natural resources as limitless; but by around 1900, this illusion of abundance was replaced by the realities of scarcity and extinction.  What had gone wrong?  Following the Civil War, the nation’s population surged from 31 million people in 1860 to 72 million by 1900.  There were simply more mouths to feed, and opportunistic bird hunters eagerly met the need.   Adding to this rising demand was the insatiable desire for bird plumage to adorn women’s hats.  But it was advances in gun technology that supercharged bird mortality rates, namely the advent of the automatic shotgun around 1890.  The slaughter of birds went from hundreds of thousands each year to millions, then tens of millions, and higher.  There was no easy solution to stop or slow the killing.  States and localities were free to devise their own hunting laws and enforce them however they wished.

Senator McLean Finds an Unlikely Ally

This perilous situation for birds is the backdrop to Senator George P. McLean’s tenure in the US Senate from 1911-1929.  McLean’s first speech on the Senate floor was on the importance of protecting migratory birds.  Change starts small, usually by just a few visionary and courageous people.  Leaders of change must then create consensus and form broad-based coalitions.  McLean did this by holding highly publicized hearings on bird destruction.  He next enlisted the support of Audubon clubs and other conservation groups, business leaders like automaker like Henry Ford, newspapers, magazines, and even gun manufacturers, who had contributed to the problem but had an obvious stake in its solution.  Opposition to bird protection came from hunters, the millinery or hat industry (that employed 83,000 people in the early 1900s), and states-rights advocates.  This loose coalition opposing bird protection used a variety of tactics to delay or stop McLean’s bill.  Their opposition solidified after America entered the First World War in April 1917.  Opponents of bird protection argued with patriotic fervor that McLean’s unnecessary quest for bird protection should be delayed indefinitely.

Undeterred, McLean found a seemingly unlikely ally from across the aisle, President Woodrow Wilson.  Despite their past differences on many issues, McLean and Wilson were both political reformers.  Each claimed his place within the Progressive movement, a political and social-reform crusade that brought major changes to the US during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Progressives sought to remedy many of the social and political injustices of the Gilded Age, a time of rapid industrialization and immense wealth creation following the American Civil War.  While Wilson agreed to help McLean, he had a caveat: Wilson insisted that Democratic leaders in Congress take ownership of the bill, forcing McLean into the background.   McLean accepted his reduced role, calling to mind the political dictum expressed by President Harry Truman many years later: “It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.”

The Renewing Effect of Generational Change

Wilson and McLean collaborated effectively to pass the MBTA even though the nation was a full combatant in World War I, suffering through a global flu pandemic, and experiencing rising political, labor, and social unrest in response to an unpopular war.  Is such bipartisan collaboration possible today to address concerns like climate change, gun violence, and immigration policy?  While a quick-fix solution to create bipartisanship is unlikely, there is hope for the future.  It is important to remember that George P. McLean came of age as a young leader around 1900, part of a new generation of reformers like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.  These young reformers had to throw off the aging “Old Guard” political leaders of the Gilded Age, rooted in patronage and corruption.  In a similar fashion it may take a generational change to end today’s polarization and excessive partisanship.  Our aging political leaders are seemingly unwilling or unable to change.  Millennials and Generation Z, or those born after 1980, may emerge as a new progressive movement, emulating the Progressive Era leaders of the early 1900s.  Recent polling by both Gallup and CNN reveal that Millennials and Gen Zers tend to approach complex issues critically and creatively and are more likely to be centrist and less partisan than earlier generations.  We can only hope that future generations will look back at today’s dysfunctional political polarization with cringeworthy disbelief.  Much like we wonder why free cigarettes were distributed to soldiers during World War II and even included with ration kits.

What do you think of the article? Let us know below.

Will’s book is A Connecticut Yankee Goes to Washington, Senator George P. McLean, Birdman of the Senate. Available here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press; March 2023

https://www.rit.edu/press/connecticut-yankee-goes-washington