Tracing a Tragedy

Greed, Guns, and the Great Bison Slaughter

Map Illustrating the Extermination of the American Bison - click to enlarge

William T. Hornady was the Chief Taxidermist for the Smithsonian Museum. After reviewing the Museum's collection and conducting a written survey, he recognized the rapid decline in the population of American Bison.

In 1886, he went west to collect specimens for the Museum in anticipation of the Bison's extinction, and was shocked at what he saw and learned. Hornaday prepared a massive report for the Smithsonian on the extermination of the bison. It was the first important text of the American wildlife conservation movement. This is his map from the report.

The map tells the story on a single page. The dark red circle on the map shows "the area once inhabited by the American Bison," and the dates in red tells the date of extinction in each locale.

We learn there were bison in Indiana and Kentucky until 1810, and in Iowa and Missouri until 1825. The blue circles show the range of the herds in 1870, and the much smaller concentric green circles show the same just 10 years later.

Illustration from Hornday’s Report - Image source

From Hornday’s Report:

Between the Rocky Mountains and the States lying along the Mississippi River on the west, from Minnesota to Louisiana, the whole country was one vast buffalo range, inhabited by millions of buffaloes.

They lived and moved as no other quadrupeds ever have, in great multitudes, like grand armies in review, covering scores of square miles at once. They were so numerous they frequently stopped boats in the rivers, threatened to overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in later years derailed locomotives and cars, until railway engineers learned by experience the wisdom of stopping their trains whenever there were buffaloes crossing the track. …

The primary cause of the buffalo’s extermination, and the one which embraced all others, was the descent of civilization, with all its elements of destructiveness, upon the whole of the country inhabited by that animal. From the Great Slave Lake to the Rio Grande the home of the buffalo was everywhere overrun by the man with a gun; and, as has ever been the case, the wild creatures were gradually swept away, the largest and most conspicuous forms being the first to go.

The secondary causes of the extermination of the buffalo may be catalogued as follows:

(1) Man’s reckless greed, his wanton destructiveness, and improvidence in not husbanding such resources as come to him from the hand of nature ready made.

(2) The total and utterly inexcusable absence of protective measures and agencies on the part of the National Government and of the Western States and Territories.

(3) The fatal preference on the part of hunters generally, both white and red, for the robe and flesh of the cow over that furnished by the bull.

(4) The phenomenal stupidity of the animals themselves, and their indifference to man.

(5) The perfection of modern breech-loading rifles and other sporting fire-arms in general.

~ excerpt from William T. Hornady’s Report

Photograph from 1892 of a pile of American bison skulls in Detroit (MI) waiting to be ground for fertilizer. ~ Source

Hornaday returned to Washington a changed man; he spent the rest of his life as perhaps the first effective voice for the preservation of species. He played a major role in the survival not only of the American Bison, but the Alaskan fur seal, the snowy egret and others.

In 1913, the United States released the “Buffalo Nickel.” On one side it showed the profile of an American Indian; on the other side was an American buffalo, modeled after a bison the designer saw in New York City's Central Park Menagerie, named Black Diamond. After the nickel's release, Black Diamond was sold to a butcher in Manhattan's Meatpacking District.

Meanwhile … the pig …

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Title: Map Illustrating the Extermination of the American Bison

Creator: Hornaday, William T. (William Temple), 1854-1937

Date: 1889

Collection: Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection: 8548