Dale F. Lott
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520233386
- eISBN:
- 9780520930742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520233386.003.0023
- Subject:
- Biology, Natural History and Field Guides
Today, the hide hunt and the hide hunters seem utterly foreign to most of us. The hide hunters have achieved the anomalous status of despised frontiersmen. Public policy toward wilderness and wild ...
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Today, the hide hunt and the hide hunters seem utterly foreign to most of us. The hide hunters have achieved the anomalous status of despised frontiersmen. Public policy toward wilderness and wild things implements attitudes — private values. The value we put on animals feels so natural and right and inevitable that it's a shock when we first learn that others feel differently about an animal's death. There is no more dramatic illustration of such differences and their consequences than the public policy debate in the 1870s about the fate of the bison. At one level it was about consequences: impact on Native Americans, impact on the bison as a natural resource, proposed legislation. But the debate drew on, and illustrated, basic attitudes toward wildlife in general and bison in particular. Then as now, attitudes were mixed.Less
Today, the hide hunt and the hide hunters seem utterly foreign to most of us. The hide hunters have achieved the anomalous status of despised frontiersmen. Public policy toward wilderness and wild things implements attitudes — private values. The value we put on animals feels so natural and right and inevitable that it's a shock when we first learn that others feel differently about an animal's death. There is no more dramatic illustration of such differences and their consequences than the public policy debate in the 1870s about the fate of the bison. At one level it was about consequences: impact on Native Americans, impact on the bison as a natural resource, proposed legislation. But the debate drew on, and illustrated, basic attitudes toward wildlife in general and bison in particular. Then as now, attitudes were mixed.
Dale F. Lott
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520233386
- eISBN:
- 9780520930742
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520233386.003.0021
- Subject:
- Biology, Natural History and Field Guides
The difficulty of estimating the bison population of primitive America shrinks in comparison to trying to estimate the numbers in North America just after the Civil War — just before the start of the ...
More
The difficulty of estimating the bison population of primitive America shrinks in comparison to trying to estimate the numbers in North America just after the Civil War — just before the start of the commercial hide hunt often called “the Great Slaughter.” Many forces — horseback hunting, robe trading, habitat degradation — bore down on bison in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even the weather turned against them. One may assume with reasonable certainty that the bison population west of the Mississippi River at the close of the Civil War numbered in the millions, probably in the tens of millions.Less
The difficulty of estimating the bison population of primitive America shrinks in comparison to trying to estimate the numbers in North America just after the Civil War — just before the start of the commercial hide hunt often called “the Great Slaughter.” Many forces — horseback hunting, robe trading, habitat degradation — bore down on bison in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Even the weather turned against them. One may assume with reasonable certainty that the bison population west of the Mississippi River at the close of the Civil War numbered in the millions, probably in the tens of millions.
Dale Lott
Jan van Wagtendonk and Kevin Shaffer (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520233386
- eISBN:
- 9780520930742
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520233386.001.0001
- Subject:
- Biology, Natural History and Field Guides
This book combines the latest scientific information and one man's personal experience in an homage to one of the most magnificent animals to have roamed America's vast, vanished grasslands. The book ...
More
This book combines the latest scientific information and one man's personal experience in an homage to one of the most magnificent animals to have roamed America's vast, vanished grasslands. The book relates what is known about this iconic animal's life in the wild and its troubled history with humans. The book takes us on a journey into the bison's past and shares a compelling vision for its future, offering along the way a valuable introduction to North American prairie ecology. The book acquaints us with the social life and physiology of the bison, sharing stories about its impressive physical prowess and fascinating relationships. Describing the entire grassland community in which the bison live, it talks about the wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, grizzly bears, and other animals and plants, detailing the interdependent relationships among these inhabitants of a lost landscape. The book also traces the long and dramatic relationship between the bison and Native Americans, and gives a surprising look at the history of the hide hunts that delivered the coup de grace to the already dwindling bison population in a few short years. This book gives us a peek at the rich and unique ways of life that evolved in the heart of America. The book also dismantles many of the myths we have created about these ways of life, and about the bison in particular, to reveal the animal itself: ruminating, reproducing, and rutting in its full glory. This portrait of the bison ultimately becomes a plea to conserve its wildness and an eloquent meditation on the importance of the wild in our lives.Less
This book combines the latest scientific information and one man's personal experience in an homage to one of the most magnificent animals to have roamed America's vast, vanished grasslands. The book relates what is known about this iconic animal's life in the wild and its troubled history with humans. The book takes us on a journey into the bison's past and shares a compelling vision for its future, offering along the way a valuable introduction to North American prairie ecology. The book acquaints us with the social life and physiology of the bison, sharing stories about its impressive physical prowess and fascinating relationships. Describing the entire grassland community in which the bison live, it talks about the wolves, pronghorn, prairie dogs, grizzly bears, and other animals and plants, detailing the interdependent relationships among these inhabitants of a lost landscape. The book also traces the long and dramatic relationship between the bison and Native Americans, and gives a surprising look at the history of the hide hunts that delivered the coup de grace to the already dwindling bison population in a few short years. This book gives us a peek at the rich and unique ways of life that evolved in the heart of America. The book also dismantles many of the myths we have created about these ways of life, and about the bison in particular, to reveal the animal itself: ruminating, reproducing, and rutting in its full glory. This portrait of the bison ultimately becomes a plea to conserve its wildness and an eloquent meditation on the importance of the wild in our lives.
