If you were born between 1965 and 1975 you probably couldn’t avoid hearing the Carpenter’s tune or seeing the film about some camp misfits who identified as buffalo advocates. I was thinking about buffalo this week because one of Hope Ryden’s contentions is that no animal in America was hunted as fiercely or as extensively as the beaver. I thought about the rail trains that would drive out to the great plains just so men could shoot the great beasts from the car. I thought about pelts taken with meat that was never used for food, and I wondered if she was right. There were once an estimated 60,000,000 bison in North America. We seem to have set some fairly deadly plans for several species.
Then I remembered that buffalo lived in the great plains and beaver live everywhere there’s water in every state of the union except Hawaii.. Beaver slaughter had already been at its peak for two hundred years before the fur trade turned its attention to Bison. In fact, it was the demanding European market for beaver fur that drove the Buffalo hunting of the 1800’s.
The near extermination of the American Bison did not occur just in a few short violent years. The fur trade, which began in the 1600s, initially focused on beaver but then demanded that bison (buffalo) robes be shipped to Europe. By the early 1800s, trade in buffalo robes and buffalo tongues significantly increased and caused approximately 200,000 bison kills annually on the plains. The 1830s to 1860s were the four decades in which most of the slaughter of bison occurred. Wagon load after wagon load of robes, tongues and, occasionally, selected cuts of bison meat, moved east. Soon, collection and shipping of bison bones to eastern cities where they ground up for use as phosphorous fertilizer or bone char became common. The arrival of the railroads further exacerbated herd conditions for the bison and by the early 1880s there were only a few free-ranging bison.
From “America West” courtesy of the National Bison Association
By the 1900’s Americans had started to realize that a natural treasure was in danger of being lost. The American Bison Society was formed and Theodore Roosevelt was its first honorary president. Roosevelt was a famous hunter but also a sportsman. He understood the difference between, say, tracking and shooting a deer you’ve followed for days and tagging some domesticated quail that were just released for your target practice. Sadly beavers had no such champion, and there was never an “American Beaver Society” formed.
Speaking of children, the children’s art tile project generated some media interest and we’re hopeful the council smiles on it tomorrow night. Stop by and lend your support, we’re scheduled early and need all the friends we can get.
