What Really Happened to the Buffalo?

The Last of the Buffalo, by Bierstadt, 1888

In researching for my art history book, I was shaken to understand that the American Buffalo were systematically killed under the encouragement of our government. Hoping to force the Native Americans off the prairies and onto reservations, the thought behind the extermination of the docile species was that,  “every dead buffalo figures as one less Indian”. Without the herds, the native Americans would starve. This was the policy of leaders of government in the late 1800's, all the way up to President Ulysses S. Grant.

1938 nickle

Of course that was not depicted in the great paintings of the time. Alfred Bierstadt’s painting, The Last of the Buffalo, actually depicts a Native American in the act of planting his spear into the animal and surrounded by slaughter and a seeming abundance of wildlife. Bierstadt’s painting did a lot to reinforce the romanticism of the “wild west” and the white man’s “Manifest Destiny” to own all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Though convincingly painted, the work shows vast vistas of “empty” lands, symbolic dried bones and primitive savage warriors of the past and a dramatic blue sky portending to a bright future. Painted at the same time as Van Gogh in Europe was painting, this picture is as surreal as Starry Night. Both are interpretations of landscape reflecting dreams of the times. 

Unfortunately the reality was more of a nightmare. Congress passed a bill in 1957 to protect the Buffalo, but President Grant refused to sign it. In 2016 President Obama signed a National Bison Legacy Act protecting the mammals, who have been on the verge of being wiped out, from further harm.

A real photograph from the late 1800's

Currently, President Trump sees the need to protect hunting as a hobby, over protecting any endangered species.

Donald Trump Jr.