The destruction of the bison by Andrew C. Isenberg

Destruction of Bison

The Destruction of the Bison

The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 by Andrew Isenberg is an account of the near total-extermination of the bison in Great Plains of America. The bison population declined from being around 30,000,000 in the eighteenth century to less than a 1,000 by the end of the nineteenth century. In recounting the fate of the bison population and how it was decimated in Great Plains, Isenberg looks at various historical, cultural, economic, and ecological factors that contributed to the decimation of the animal. Isenberg challenges two conventional explanations of the bison destruction, both of which largely laid blame on the white Euro-American predators. It was believed that the behavior of Euro-American settlers in the Great Plains was characterized by wastefulness, while Native American Indians were conscious environmentalists (Gore) who preyed on the buffalo only out of necessity and did not kill the bison at a greater pace than the natural reproduction of the bison itself. Many historians also viewed the ecosystem as a stable habitat, disrupted only by the capitalist greed of humans. Isenberg rejects both of these claims, arguing instead that American Indians significantly contributed to the destruction of the bison. But Isenberg also argues that the unpredictability of the natural world played no less significant a role in contributing to the massive decline of the bison population.

There is no one party or group which is solely to blame for the destruction of the bison, Isenberg argues. The story of the bison in Great Plains does not simply involve human greed, but also "a host of economic, cultural, and ecological factors that herded the bison toward their near-extinction" (Isenberg, 1). The players in the destruction included grassland ecology, smallpox, horses, the fur trade, Euro-Americans, Native Americans, and various cultural beliefs of both Euro-American and Indian societies. The natural environment, Isenberg argues, is prone to unpredictable changes, causing blizzards, drought, predation, fires, or vigorous disease, and that these natural changes in the habitat took its toll on the bison population. Because of Euro-American invasion of the Great Plains, many sedentary Native American tribes became nomadic, and with the introduction of horses, which both competed with the buffalo for the scarce resources and facilitated the process of hunting, many Indians began to overhunt for economic purposes. And the last straw came when the white Euro-Americans displaced Indians and began hunting for the bison as a sports game as well as a way of destroying the Native American population. Thus, for the believers of Manifest Destiny, the destruction of the bison was a demonstration of the triumph of civilization over savagery.

Isenberg compellingly argues that the interaction between Euro-Americans and American Indians and their behavior towards the bison cannot be understood in isolation from the natural functioning of the nonhuman nature. It is important to understand the natural world around humans, he argues, to see a larger picture of what befell on the American bison population. Drawing his understanding of the natural world from chaos theory, Isenberg rejects the notion that the environment tends toward order and equilibrium unless disrupted by human action. The Great Plains grasslands inhabited by the buffalo were volatile and dynamic even without human intervention, Isenberg argues. The ecological habitat was unpredictable due to irregular periods of rain, droughts, and blizzards. The western plains in particular were subject to frequent ecological instability. To give an example (out of many provided by Isenberg), the drought affected the Plains significantly in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were periodic droughts from 1761 to 1773, from 1798 to 1803, and later from 1822 to 1832. These extended dry periods, Isenberg points out, normally killed 70-90% of the vegetation, which obviously killed a lot of buffalos. This unpredictability of the nature was certainly beyond the human capacity to control.

The irregularity of the ecosystem significantly contributed to the decline of the bison population, but it did not kill it. Isenberg argues that the ecology simply helped to decimate the bison. Economic and social factors contributed to the decimation, by encouraging both the newcomers -- Euro-Americans -- and Native Americans to excessively hunt on the bison. Euro-Americans forced many American Indians into the Great Plains. As a result, many sedentary Indians chose the nomadic way of life, and this social change forced them to hunt on the buffalo on a greater level. Introduction of various domesticated animals such as cattle also changed the environmental equilibrium, while the introduction of horses was catastrophic to the bison population. Horses competed with the bison for food, while Native Americans became better hunters because they understood the ease hunting with horses offered. The rise of industrialization and capitalism further contributed to the process, totally changing the ecological habitat of the Plains, and encouraging American Indians to hunt more because of the opportunities the fur trade offered.

Economic and social factors, Isenberg argues, are embedded in culture. So, cultural factors were not absent from the equation. In particular, cultural constructions of gender among Euro-American and American Indian societies were significant. The Native American market in the Plains was based on a gendered division of labor. Women dressed skins, while men hunted. The robe trade greatly accelerated in the nineteenth century and this resulted in more women working in the dressing of robes. Cultural constructions of gender were important for those who were concerned with the fate of the bison as well, Isenberg points out. Establishment of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to halt the destruction of bison by Euro-American hide hunters was a reflection of the new "feminized rhetoric of moral reform" among the white population (Isenberg, 5). Also, many frontiersmen saw the decline of the bison population as a reflection of the waning masculine virtues. These attitudes urged people like Theodore Roosevelt to try to preserve the bison from extinction. At stake was not only the fate of the bison but also the fate of American manhood. No less important were the Euro-American cultural attitudes toward Native Americans and their way of life. Destruction of the bison, many Euro-Americans believed, would deprive American Indians of their main source of livelihood, and would force them to adapt to farming and "civilized" ways of cultivating the land, or, on the extreme side of it, perish altogether.