Why did Buffalo Bill and others kill so many buffalo?

Question

Were people in the 1800's just bored or what? Was buffalo shooting their version of television?

Answer 1

1. To disrupt the horse culture Plains Indians whole way of living.

The Cheyanne, Sioux/Lakota, Crow, and Blackfoot Confederates were by far and away the most feared aboriginal groups in all of white North American society in the late nineteenth century. They were fierce horsemen that could ride out of nowhere and return to the same and there seemed to be nothing whites could do about it. That is of course excepting the practices of causing nothing short of complete economic destruction for them which was acheieved with the extinction of the Plains bison. (Wood and Mountain Bison are what we have left. The Plains bison are gone) It was for this reason the American military and government supported the buffalo hunt.

2. To prevent the herd's destruction of agrarian and industrial infrastructure

The bison herds were massive. They could run through fences, destroy ranches, and trample railways into nothing just by passing by. With them gone, you can keep cattle fenced, crops planted, buildings standing, and tracks laid. That was the settlers reason to extinguish the prairie bison.

3. bison hides where larger and heavier than cattle hides which therefore made for better leather. That made them a target for commercial hunters looking to make a few dollars of the leather industry. Once all the meat had rotted off them, the bones too made excellent fertilizer.

4. Trophy hunters killed bison for the same reason they killed elephants, tigers, and grizzleys. They're big and mighty, and make for an excellent trophy to show your "manhood"

Answer 2

The same reason most things happen, really. Economics.

Buffalo were plentiful and easy to hunt. You can see how some people were interested in maximizing their dollar per hour rate - they'd wipe out an entire herd and then only take the most valuable and easiest to collect piece (the tongue).

This tends to be observed in any industry that is completely (or even mostly) unregulated. Some will be interested in long-term sustainability (like Buffalo Bill, actually), some will be concerned only with maximum short-term profits, and most will lie somewhere in between. Sometimes the profiteers destroy it for everyone else (as with the buffalo) and sometimes the conservationists win out (as with, say, Weyerhauser and their massive forest holdings).

Answer 3

Buffalo Bill was actually a conservationist! and a showman. He earned his nickname for his skill while supplying Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat. Cody recognized very early that a developer in the West was obligated to be a preserver as well. He has spoken out against the hide-hunters of the 1870s and 1880s for slaughtering the buffalo "cruelly, recklessly." In Wyoming and Colorado he worked to establish game preserves and limit hunting seasons. Gifford Pinchot, noted conservationist and head of the Forest Service for Theodore Roosevelt, lauded him as "not only a fighter but a seer."

Answer 4

They did it for sport, but it was also a specific policy to undermine the way of life of the plains indians, the Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow, and others. Their societies were dependent on the buffalo as a staple food and as material for homes and clothing. By killing the buffalo the US government made the native americans much more reliant on government aid and it was much easier to force them to stay on reservations.

Answer 5

Buffalo were killed for two primary reasons:

1. They ate the grass that farmers and rangers needed for their cattle and sheep and when they moved through an area, the ground and grass were destroyed or all torn up.

2. Buffalo meat and coats were new commodities for the eastern consumer.

Answer 6

it's a simple economics problem.....


The demand for buffalo goods (i.e skins and tongues) was high and the more you killed the more money you made.

you might want to see "Dances with Wolves"....it's a Kevin Costner movie (it won Oscars) that touches on the effects of colonization on the Native Americans (look for the buffalo hunting scenes....there's one where they find a valley filled with dead buffalo)

Answer 7

buffalo hides brought the hunters a lot of money for the amount expended to hunt. also the U. S. govt thought it was a great way to wipe out or immobilize plains Indians, by the total destruction of their primary food source.

Answer 8

it was fun for them. it was a hunting sport. and some poeple like buffalo bill killed so many as a status symbol. "i can kill __ buffalos in 2 mins"

Answer 9

hunting of all sorts had flourished because of the "new ability" of arms manufacturers to produce quality "mass-produced" and acurrate weapons...this was formerly a one-of-a-kind affair heretofore and there was very little standardization in caliber and bore sizes!!the industrial revolution and new machinery driven by reliable water-wheel,steam and mechanical power made these fine arms with interchangeable parts and repair capability "common" and cheap to produce!!it was a case of the "sorcerer's apprentice"!!!!more guns were being produced than one national marketplace could absorb;so international markets for weapons were sought out and encouraged!!and we are still plagued with the results!!!first animal species were hunted to extinction and then we turned to killing each other!!the meat of the buffaloes was left to rot in many cases,sometimes only the tongues and the hides were saved as products for commerce!!!the basic idea of the railroad combines was to deny the american indians their most reliable and valued foodstuff that was absolutely indispensible to the maintenace of their freedom,culture and lifestyles!!and these indians threatened the progress of the railways from their coast-to-coast tragectories!!!the railroads were promised and received 50 miles of lands on both sides of their lines as completed,by the federal governmentwhich they could sell or maintain in perpetuity!!much of this land is still held by railwat endeavors!!this land was checkerboarded however with government landholdings;and the only way that it could be made "to pay for itself" was to sell it to potential settlers!!these lots were offered to immigrants for all over the world and that is the beginning of even greater problems for the "true development" of america!!!for which i might add that we,as a nation have still not recovered from because of the greed of the federal government in league which the pecuniary wantonness of the railroad lines historic creators!!displacing the indians of their lands and sovereignity,freedom and lands was absolutely indispensible to this endeavor in these men's eyes!!and killing all of their game and depriving them of sustenance and refuge and freedom was fiat accompli;even though much of these lands remain to this day uninhabited and undeveloped in any but the must rudimentary ways...e.i.cattle ranching and right-of-way freight hauling through unpeopled territory!!!!

Answer 10

It was NOT fun. It was hard, nasty work (at least the skinning part), and they did it for the money.