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Bison hunting (hunting of the American bison, also commonly known as the American buffalo) was an activity fundamental to the economy and society of the Plains Indians peoples who inhabited the vast grasslands on the Interior Plains of North America, before the animal's near-extinction in the late 19th century following US expansion into the West. Bison hunting was an important spiritual practice and source of material for these groups, especially after the European introduction of the horse in the 16th through 19th centuries enabled new hunting techniques. The species' dramatic decline was the result of habitat loss due to the expansion of ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting practiced by non-Indigenous hunters increased Indigenous hunting pressure due to non-Indigenous demand for bison hides and meat, and cases of a deliberate policy by settler governments to destroy the food source of the Indigenous peoples during times of conflict. Prehistoric and native hunting The steppe bison (Bison priscus) was found in North America more than a million years ago, well before the first humans are believed to have arrived. It is believed to have evolved into the giant Ice Age bison (Bison latifrons) which lived from 200,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago. It was in turn replaced by Bison occidentalis, which is believed to have come from Eurasia, and Bison antiquus which evolved separately from B. priscus. The first human arrivals in North America, the Paleo-Indians, are believed to have hunted these last two species (occidentalis and antiquus) but did not rely on them to the exclusion of other large herbivorous mammals such as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, and ground sloths. Around 11,000–10,000 years ago, however, the majority of the large game species in North America became extinct, possibly due to overhunting, or some combination of this and other factors. One of the few large survivors was B. antiquus, but its average size declined until it evolved into the smaller modern American bison around 5,000 years ago. Native American plains bison hunting The modern American bison is split into two subspecies, the wood bison in the boreal forests of what is now Canada, and the plains bison on the prairies extending from Canada to Mexico. The plains subspecies became the dominant animal of the prairies of North America, where bison were a keystone species, whose grazing and trampling pressure was a force that shaped the ecology of the Great Plains as strongly as periodic prairie fires and which were central to the survival of many Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. To the corn-growing village people, it was a valued second food source. However, there is now some controversy over their interaction. Charles C. Mann wrote in 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, pages 367 ff, "Hernando De Soto's expedition staggered through the Southeast for four years in the early 16th century and saw hordes of people but apparently didn't see a single bison." Mann discussed the evidence that Native Americans not only created (by selective use of fire) the large grasslands that provided the bison's ideal habitat but also kept the bison population regulated. In this theory, it was only when the original human population was devastated by wave after wave of epidemics (from diseases of Europeans) after the 16th century that the bison herds propagated wildly. In such a view, the seas of bison herds that stretched to the horizon were a symptom of an ecology out of balance, only rendered possible by decades of heavier-than-average rainfall. Other evidence of the arrival circa 1550–1600 in the savannas of the eastern seaboard includes the lack of places that southeast natives named after buffalo. Bison were the most numerous single species of large wild mammal on Earth. Russel Means states that bison were killed by using a method that coyotes implemented. Coyotes will sometimes cut one bison off from the herd and chase it in a circle until the animal collapses or gives up due to exhaustion. Working on foot, a few groups of Native Americans at times used fires to channel an entire herd of buffalo over a cliff, sometimes killing far more than they could use. The Olsen–Chubbuck archaeological site in Colorado reveals some techniques, which may or may not have been widely used. The method involves skinning down the back to get at the tender meat just beneath the surface, the area known as the "hatched area". After the removal of the hatched area, the front legs are cut off as well as the shoulder blades. Doing so exposes the hump meat (in the Wood Bison), as well as the meat of the ribs and the Bison's inner organs. After everything was exposed, the spine was then severed and the pelvis and hind legs were removed. Finally, the neck and head were removed as one. This allowed for the tough meat to be dried and made into pemmican. Castaneda saw Indigenous women butchering bison with a flint fixed on a short stick. He admired how quickly they completed the task. Blood to drink was filled in emptied guts, which were carried around the neck. A Crow historian has related some ways to get bison. With the help of songs, hazers, drive lines of stones, and a medicine man pointing down the line with a pair of hindquarters in his hands, the Crows drove many bison over a cliff. A successful drive could give 700 animals. During winter, Chief One Heart's camp would maneuver the game out on slick ice, where it was easier to kill with hunting weapons. Henry Kelsey described a hunt on the northern plains in 1691. First, the tribe surrounded a herd. Then they would "gather themselves into a smaller Compass Keeping ye Beast still in ye middle". The hunters killed as many as they could before the animals broke through the human ring. In the dog days, the women of a Blackfoot camp made a curved fence of travois' tied together, front end up. Runners drove the game towards the enclosure, where hunters waited with lances, as well as bows and arrows. The Hidatsa near the Missouri River confined the buffalo on the weakest ice at the end of winter. When it cracked, the current swept the animals down under thicker ice. The people hauled the drowned animals ashore when they emerged downstream. Although not hunted in a strict sense, the nearby Mandan secured bison, and drowned by chance, when the ice broke. A trader observed the young men "in the drift ice leap from piece to piece, often falling between, plunging under, darting up elsewhere and securing themselves upon very slippery flakes" before they brought the carcasses to land. Religion also plays a big role in Native American bison hunting. Plains tribes generally believe that successful hunts require certain rituals. The Omaha tribe had to approach a herd in four legs. At each stop, the chiefs and the leader of the hunt would sit down and smoke and offer prayers for success. The Pawnee performed the purifyi.... Discover the Christopher Fowler Norman Partridge Robe popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Christopher Fowler Norman Partridge Robe books.