Having a bit of a Twilight Zone experience. The feeling that comes over you when something you think you know is completely changed up. Scrambled.
I read in Meteor Blade's diary a story about an Army officer telling a buffalo hunter ( Frank Myer) that he needed to kill buffalo. He said “Mayer, either the buffalo or the Indian must go. There isn’t any other way. Only when the Indian becomes absolutely dependent upon us for his every need will we be able to handle him. Every buffalo you kill now will save a white man’s life. Go to it.”
Okay … that’s just an officer voicing his opinion, right?
Because … I had never heard such a thing uttered.
What would be our current day response if a government controlled their people by destroying all of the food sources to make them relent? My God, the thought it staggering. That would be considered an especially cruel form of genocide. And damn diabolical. This is not burning crops to deny provisions … this is making a years long effort to starve a culture … men, women and children.
In Hollywood … the buffalo hunter is depicted, at times, as heroic … also, often as greedy. I don’t ever recall them depicted as complicit in genocide.
It does explain, for me (I’m 62) a lifetime of wondering … what the hell … buffalo hides?? … who the hell wanted buffalo hides back east.
I did a little checking …. The Bison Market has a page about just this subject. In their own telling ...More buffalo were killed during the 1870s than during any other decade in American history. One buffalo hunter determined that 4.5 million buffalo were slaughtered between 1872 and 1874. The U.S. government was engaged in a policy designed to eradicate the buffalo, freeing the Western Plains for development. The buffalo, and the Indians who relied on it for sustenance, were blocking the progress of civilization. By killing the buffalo, Indians would be forced onto reservations and public land tracts would be open to use for cattle, increasing the leather supply.
Okay. So, there it is. Everything I know about buffalo hunting is wrong. And, I’m not sure I’ve processed the rest.
Really … we killed their food source to make them subject to our will. That was a well thought out and instituted government plan.
I know … I’m naïve. Maybe it was in the history books and I just didn’t learn it. I knew we took their land by force. I know we continue to keep the Native American population subjugated.
I just didn’t realize it was a policy … like sanctions. “If we seize their assets, they will capitulate”
“If we starve them all, they will capitulate”
Am I missing something? Should I feel like an idiot for not knowing this?
Isn’t this … extra egregious? Cruelty above and beyond?
