All language subtitles for The.American.Buffalo.S01E01.720p.WEBRip.x264[eztv.re]

Viewers like you make
this program possible.

Support your local PBS station.

In the spring of 1805,

the Lewis and Clark expedition
reached what is now Montana,

near where the Yellowstone
and Missouri rivers meet,

moving farther west than any
white Americans had ever gone.

Along the way,
they had encountered

tribes of Native people who,
for hundreds of generations,

had called
the bountiful land home.

Wildlife "seemed to be
everywhere"...

And "in astonishing numbers,"
Meriwether Lewis wrote,

particularly the buffalo.

The whole face of the country

was covered with herds of
buffalo, elk, and antelopes.

The buffalo frequently
approach us

more nearly to discover
what we are,

and in some instances pursue us

a considerable distance
apparently with that view.

Less than
a century later, in 1887,

another expedition
would explore the same region.

They hoped to find
some buffaloes to kill

and then preserve for an exhibit

at the American Museum of
Natural History

in New York City.

They searched for three months
without seeing a single one.

"Everything the Kiowas had

"came from the buffalo.

"Their tepees were made
of buffalo hide,

"so were
their clothes and moccasins.

"They ate buffalo meat.

"Most of all, the buffalo
was part of the Kiowa religion.

"The priests used parts of
the buffalo

"to make their prayers
when they healed people

"or when they sang
to the powers above.

The buffalo were
the life of the Kiowas."

Old Lady Horse.

They are the national
mammal of the United States,

the largest land animals
in the Western Hemisphere...

A species that scientists
call "Bison bison."

Nourished by one of the world's
greatest grasslands,

they proliferated into herds
of uncountable numbers

and in turn, by their grazing,

nurtured the prairie
that sustained them.

For more than 10,000 years,

they evolved alongside
Indigenous people,

who relied on them for food
and shelter

and, in exchange for
killing them, revered them.

So much of my blood memory
has to do with buffalo.

We have regard for each other.

And we are friends.
We are brothers. We are related.

So, I, you know, think of them
in a particular way.

And it's always with reverence.

Newcomers
to the continent found them

fascinating at first but
in time, came to consider them

a hindrance and then a source
of profit for a growing nation.

In the space of only a decade,

they were slaughtered by
the millions for their hides,

with their carcasses left
to rot on the prairies;

the species itself teetering

on the brink of
disappearing forever

from the face of the earth.

The story of
American bison really is

two different stories.

It really is a story of
Indigenous people

and their relationship with the
bison for thousands of years.

And then enter not just
the Europeans but the Americans.

And that's a completely
different story.

And that really is
a story of utter destruction.

It's not just the story
of this magnificent animal.

It takes us

into all the different corners
of our history

and how we interact with
one another as human beings.

It is a heartbreaking story

of a collision of
two different views

of how human beings should
interact with the natural world.

And there's a tragedy at
the very heart of that story.

At the same time,
as you follow it

a little bit farther down
that trail,

it can offer us hope.

They're these big,
slightly strange-looking

but magnificent,
magnificent animals.

And they're ours. Right?

They're our animal.

If you see one out grazing,
it looks so slow.

It's like a parked car
sitting there.

But they can clear
six-foot fences.

They can jump
a horizontal jump of seven feet.

They can hit a speed,
hit a speed of 35 miles an hour.

And you're talking about
something that can get going

that speed that's 1,800 pounds.

It's like a souped-up hot rod

of an animal
hiding in a minivan shell.

Fully grown,
an American buffalo can weigh

more than a ton, stand taller
than six feet at the shoulder,

and stretch
more than ten feet long,

not including the tail.

Huge as they are, they are small

compared to some of
the prehistoric animals

that once roamed the continent:

woolly mammoths,
giant ground sloths,

and camels,

and other species of bison,

one of which had horns that
spanned 9 feet from tip to tip.

After humans arrived
in North America

more than 20,000 years ago,
all of the biggest animals...

Along with
nearly 50 other species...

Went extinct on the continent,

from either hunting
or changing climate

or a combination of the two.

In their place, the modern
buffalo evolved and multiplied,

particularly on the grasslands
of the Great Plains.

Bison and humans,
in a real sense,

co-evolved alongside one another

over the last 10,000 years
or so.

Sometimes the animals
would ebb and flow,

but they always rebounded.

And, so,
there was this wonderful

kind of dynamic equilibrium

that lasted
for more than 10,000 years.

They have always
lived with humans.

They've always
been hunted by humans;

they've always had predators,

so their entire sort of evolution

as an animal species has been

as an animal
that has been hunted.

And their primary defense
mechanism is to run away.

And they have
that skill at a very young age.

A newborn buffalo calf tries
to stand for the first time

at the age of two minutes.

And, at seven minutes, they're
able to run with the herd.

Over the centuries,
their grazing habits

on the wide expanses of
the Great Plains proved crucial

to its ecology... the types of
grasses that flourished there

and the other species that
thrived alongside the buffalo.

Even when they stopped

and sometimes dug through
the grass with their horns

and then rolled in the dust,
creating "buffalo wallows,"

the bison's habits
helped support

other forms
of life on the Plains.

It's not just one wallow.

We're talking about
millions of bison,

which means millions of wallows.

Those wallows could do
a couple of things.

At its most simple and basic,
it's a "dirt bath."

But then it also has
an ecosystem function...

Water retention.

If it rained, these become
shallow little ponds and pools.

And that, in turn, affected
the landscape as well.

Because it's
also a disturbed area,

plants that flourish
in disturbed areas

will also
then grow around a wallow.

So they became
these really great areas,

not only for wildlife to use
but also for humans to use

because of
the plants that were there.

When the buffalo
are here, the land is good.

When the land is good,
the buffalo are healthy.

We have lived
here for 600 generations.

We have been here,
conservatively, 12,000 years.

So, if you think about that
12,000 years...

Imagine that on a timeline,

and then take that 12,000 years

and wrap that timeline
around a 24-hour clock.

What that means is
that Columbus arrived

at about 11:28 p.m.,

and Lewis and Clark, at about
15 minutes before midnight.

Native Americans
seamlessly wove the animals

into every aspect
of their daily lives

and religious beliefs.

The buffalo
was iconic and sacred,

and became so deeply ingrained

in the life of the tribe that
they could not imagine existence

without the buffalo.

In the ancient
origin stories of many tribes,

the bison were among
the earliest animals created,

often emerging
before human beings

from under ground
in what became sacred sites,

like Wind Cave
in the Black Hills

of what is now South Dakota

or Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains,

whose most prominent peak is
now called Mount Scott.

The Kiowas, in particular,
believed that

this was the mountain

from which buffalo
had originally emerged

and that whenever they went
away... and buffalo did go away

in the remembered histories
of tribal people...

This is where,
on the Southern Plains,

the buffalo went.

The Cheyenne and Lakota

each have their own stories

about a contest between people
and bison to determine

which one would
have mastery over the other.

In a long and arduous race
circling the Black Hills,

some of the animals died

and stained the soil red forever
with their blood.

In the end, the people won.

"The old buffalo bulls called

"the young man to come to them.

"'Well, you have won, '
they said.

"'You are on top now.

"'All we animals can do is
supply the things that

"'you will use from us...
Our meat and skins and bones.

And we will teach you
the Sun Dance.'"

John Stands in Timber.

Every tribe
on the Plains held ceremonies

related to the buffalo,
who, it was said,

had their own families
and clans,

their own societies and customs,

and were capable
of changing forms

to communicate directly
with humans.

The Mandan,
in what is now North Dakota,

had the White Buffalo
Cow Society...

Respected older women,
whose leader wrapped herself

in the robe of a rare
and sacred white buffalo

as they danced all night
to call the bison herds closer.

In a different ceremony,
experienced hunters

costumed themselves
as buffalo bulls,

whose power, called "medicine,"

could be shared
with others in the tribe.

The first thing I was told
about buffalo was

not really
the hunting part of it.

First thing I was
told about them was

the spirituality part of it,

about how they were created
by our Creator,

how they were put on this earth
to help us survive,

not only with clothing,
with warmth,

with food, with tools,

but with the essential,

which was
the spirit of the buffalo,

and how the spirit was part
of us and we were part of them.

Each summer,
the Lakota, like many tribes,

gathered for a Sun Dance,
their most important ceremony,

which renewed their relationship
with Wakan-Tanka,

the great spirit of the universe
that permeates everything.

Buffaloes were considered

the animal with the most direct
connection to that life force.

Over the course
of many generations,

the Kiowa had moved
from the mountains

near the headwaters
of the Yellowstone River

down to the northern Plains;
then to the Black Hills;

and eventually farther south

to the Wichita Mountains
in what is now Oklahoma.

Along the way, they learned
their Sun Dance from the Crows.

The Sun Dance
was an indispensable part

of the Kiowa life.

And the buffalo was
the sacrificial victim

of the Sun Dance.

Could not have a Sun Dance
without killing a buffalo bull

and displaying its head
in the Sun Dance lodge.

What more valuable a sacrifice
could you make

than to kill a buffalo
and offer it to the sun?

You don't just go out
and kill a buffalo.

You go to your ceremonies;
you pray.

And you ask
for the gift of a buffalo.

You ask that a buffalo
will give itself to you.

And it's
a spiritual relationship.

You do everything in prayer,

and you do everything
with a pure heart.

During the mass extinction

of prehistoric mammals,
the horse was one of the species

that had disappeared
from North America.

For hundreds of generations
after that,

Native people ventured
onto the Plains by foot,

relying on dogs
to pull their belongings.

Hunting buffalo was
difficult and dangerous.

To get close enough with
a bow and arrow or a lance,

some hunters covered
themselves with buffalo hides

or wolf skins and crept up
within striking distance.

In winter, hunters wearing shoes
webbed with buffalo sinew

chased them
into deep snow drifts.

The biggest hunts involved

the entire village
in an elaborate maneuver

to stampede a herd over cliffs.

There was a system of
both kind of pushing the bison

to where they were going,

and pulling the bison
to where they were going.

They'll put on wolf skins
and pretend that they're wolves,

so, they're pushing, right,
the bison

towards where they want to go.

Then they would have somebody

who was really good at imitating

the cry of a bison calf
in distress.

And, so, the cows are then
leading the rest of the herd

because they're listening

to this, you know,
baby, um, calf crying.

And they're just like,
"Calf in distress.

Let's go save it."

And here come
these stampeding bison

and your job,
if you're the decoy,

is to do some quick, you know,
head fake,

and get out of the way
or maybe jump into a crevice,

and then
the bison go over the edge.

Sometimes, you can go to
buffalo jumps when the wind is

just right and when people

ain't talking like
a bunch of magpies.

You get a little quiet time.

You could almost hear
the joy of the humans

because, for a week, a month,
six months into the winter,

we're going to eat.

And that makes people happy,

knowing that they're
going to eat.

Stripped of its hide,
each carcass provided

hundreds of pounds of meat,

which could be roasted
or boiled;

cut into strips
and dried on racks;

or mixed with tallow and berries
to make pemmican,

a dehydrated concoction
that was easier to transport,

preserved the meat longer,

and provided five times
the food value per pound.

From the moment
a Plains Indian child was born

and wrapped
in a soft layer of buffalo hair

and a tanned calf skin

to the time his or her corpse
was shrouded in a bison robe,

every day of life
was connected with the buffalo.

In winter, when the bison's fur
was the thickest,

its hide would be tanned
and turned into a warm robe.

In the summer,
when the hides had less hair,

they could be sewn together
into coverings for tepees.

Stretched over a frame of
curved willow branches,

a hide was transformed
into a bowl-like boat

for crossing rivers.

A buffalo's bladder
became a water container;

its shoulder blade
a digging tool;

its horn a spoon or a cup.

Buffalo teeth became ornaments.

Some women painted their faces
with buffalo grease

to protect their complexions
from the sun

and used the rough side
of a buffalo tongue

to brush their hair.

Tendons were turned
into bow strings,

and a sharpened horn fragment
into an arrowhead.

Dried buffalo droppings
made fuel for fires,

an essential commodity
on the nearly treeless Plains.

So nothing was wasted.

Even the waste wasn't wasted.

Everything was used
except for the grunting.

And, even then, they were
used in some of the ceremonies,

I'm sure,
to imitate the buffalo.

So, even the sounds were used.

It gives itself
to the people as a sacrifice.

"Here I am;
you can make use of me.

"I can help you.

We can be related
on a spiritual plane."

Whenever the buffalo
periodically disappeared,

special ceremonies were required
to call them back.

So,
when they did something wrong,

the buffalo might well react
and withhold their affection.

"No, I will not make myself
available to you for hunting.

"I will hide.

You will have to find me,
and it will not be easy."

The stories almost always
convey a sense that it's been

human hubris that's caused
the animals to withdraw,

and the only way
to get them back is

to perform some kind of
really profound ceremony,

some act that
convinces the animals

and the animal masters
who are in charge of them

that humans are once again
willing to be

fellow travelers in the world.

Not exceptional,
not standing apart,

but part of the ecology
of all living things.

The Cheyenne
had followed them so closely

and for so many years,

they had 27 different words
for a buffalo,

depending on its sex, age,
or condition.

"As I now think
upon those days,"

a Cheyenne named Wooden Leg remembered,

"it seems that
no people in the world

ever were any richer
than we were."

But the Cheyenne prophet
Sweet Medicine

had also given his people
a warning.

There is a time coming.

Many things will change.

Strangers will appear among you.

Their skins are light-colored,
and their ways are powerful.

These people do not follow the
way of our great-grandfather.

They follow another way.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus,

seeking a western water route
from Spain to the Indies,

stumbled upon a world that
Europeans had not known existed.

Nothing would ever be the same

for people on either side
of the Atlantic Ocean.

For the Indigenous populations
of the Americas,

it would prove catastrophic.

In some tribes, nearly 90%
would perish from diseases

for which
they had little immunity.

Wave after wave of epidemics
swept across the hemisphere

as European powers
competed to exploit

the bountiful resources
and countless natural wonders

that the continent
seemed to offer for the taking.

One of the most fascinating
wonders was the bison.

Wandering across
what is now Texas in the 1530s,

Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca

and three other survivors
of a Spanish shipwreck

became the first Europeans
to encounter American buffalo,

when a tribe they met
fed the starving strangers

with the animal's meat.

Less than a decade later,

a conquistador named
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado

led his mounted soldiers
onto the Great Plains,

pursuing rumors of cities
filled with silver and gold.

Instead, he found
villages of Wichita Indians.

But he and his men were
astonished by the landscape

and the huge herds of
buffalo roaming across it.

"There was not a day
I lost sight of them,"

an amazed Coronado wrote.

The only way
to describe their numbers was

to compare them
to the fishes of the sea.

His army killed
and ate 500 bison

on their futile quest for gold

and stacked piles of dung

to mark their route
for the return trip.

They then wrote
the King of Spain

that a fortune could be made

in turning buffalo hides
into leather.

They saw this animal
in incredible profusion.

And they thought,
"You know, what's in it for us?

How can we profit from this?"

Buffalo were nearly
everywhere in North America.

No one knows

exactly how many bison
once existed on the continent,

but it was
in the many tens of millions.

Their range extended
from west of the Rocky Mountains

into Idaho, Oregon,
and Washington;

from northern Mexico
into Canada;

from Florida to Lake Erie.

In 1613,
sailing up the Potomac River,

one of the early
Jamestown colonists

came across a herd near
what is now Washington, D.C.

But as English colonies grew
along the Atlantic Coast,

the number of buffalo

east of the Appalachian
Mountains dwindled.

Worried that the animals
were disappearing, in 1759,

Georgia's provincial legislature
made it illegal to hunt them

in some parts of the colony.

No one enforced the law.

When Daniel Boone opened the
Wilderness Trail into Kentucky

for settlers eager for
new lands, the route he followed

through the Cumberland Gap
was called a "buffalo trace,"

which the animals
had been using for centuries.

West of the mountains, he wrote,

"the buffaloes were
more frequent

than I have seen cattle
in the settlements."

As a young surveyor and soldier,

George Washington had
once hunted buffalo

near the Ohio River.

In 1775, just before he left for
the Second Continental Congress,

he hired a man
to capture some calves

so he could raise them
on his Mount Vernon plantation.

By the early 1800s,

nearly all the bison east of
the Mississippi were gone.

But in the Great Plains,
an estimated 30 million buffalo

still roamed, along
with 120,000 Native people.

Life there for the Indians
and the buffalo

had already been transformed

by something else the Europeans
had brought to North America.

Years before, the Cheyenne
prophet Sweet Medicine

had told his people
about it, too.

There will be an animal

you must learn to use.

It has a shaggy neck

and a tail almost touching
the ground.

Its hooves are round.

This animal will carry you
on his back

and help you in many ways.

Those far hills that seem only
a blue vision in the distance

take many days to reach now,
but with this animal,

you can get there
in a short time, so fear it not.

Remember what I have said.

Spanish conquistadors
had used horses to great effect

in battles with Native people,

who had never seen
such animals before.

But in 1680, the Pueblo tribes
had risen up in revolt

and drove the Spanish
out of New Mexico.

Their horse herds
remained and flourished.

In less than a century,
the horse had spread

from one tribe
to another throughout the West.

The coming of the horse
brought about

such a revolution.

Suddenly, it was magic
and indispensable,

and changed their lives completely.

A mounted hunter
could now kill enough buffalo

in one day to feed and clothe
his family for months.

And with horses, not dogs,

pulling a tepee and belongings
on a travois,

families could travel farther
into the vastness of the Plains

to pursue the herds.

Some tribes
left their permanent villages

and cultivated fields altogether
to become semi-nomadic hunters

and among the greatest
equestrians in the world.

Between 1730 and 1830,

as many as three dozen
different tribes,

living either
on the margins of the Plains

or, in some cases,
even farther distant than that,

mounted up on horses,
abandoned their farming plots,

and rode out on the Plains
to hunt buffalo.

So that combination of those
two great Pleistocene animals...

The horse and the bison...

Became a revolution
in American history

that produced the classic
Plains Indian buffalo hunter.

"The great herds of
buffalo were constantly moving,

"and of course,
we moved when they did.

"All that was changed
by the horse.

"Even the old people could ride.

"I came into a happy world.

"There was always fat meat,
glad singing, and much dancing

"in our villages.

Our people's hearts were then
as light as breath-feathers."

Pretty Shield.

If you think of a human being
on the back of a horse

as a kind of a new species...

A single animal,
a single animal,

a, "horse-man," hyphen,

not a horseman,
but a "horse-man."

This is an animal that has

the strength and the power
of a horse,

drawn from the sunlight
and those grasses,

and the grace of a horse,

but it has the intelligence
and the imagination

and the ambition and
the arrogance of a human being.

That's a new animal.

This was something that the
bison had never faced before.

And that was trouble.

Some 30 tribes
converged on the Great Plains

from every direction,

each of them increasingly
dependent on the bison

for their sustenance
and prosperity,

and equally dependent
on the horse

for their hunting and their
defense against their enemies.

Meanwhile, European powers...

The Spanish, French,
Russians, and British...

Were locked in their own contest

over the destiny
of the American West.

"This immense river

"waters one of the fairest
portions of the globe,

"nor do I believe that there
is in the universe

"a similar extent of country.

"As we passed on,
it seemed as if those scenes

of visionary enchantment
would never have an end."

Meriwether Lewis.

In 1803, the young United States

joined the competition.

President Thomas Jefferson's
Louisiana Purchase extended

his nation's western boundary

from the Mississippi all
the way to the Rocky Mountains.

Jefferson then dispatched
the Lewis and Clark expedition

up the Missouri River

to study the land's
terrain and potential.

They began to see
a whole host of creatures

that none of these people
had ever seen.

They see their first mule deer,
their first magpies,

their first coyotes,
their first prairie dogs,

their first pronghorns.

One animal after another that

no one had any inkling actually
existed in North America

is suddenly showing up
in front of them.

And one of the things they
began seeing, of course,

are increasingly larger
and larger herds of bison,

stretching to those unfathomable
distances across the horizon.

So, what they preserve for us
in their journals is

a glimpse into the America
that had existed

for 10,000 years before us.

On their return trip
from the Pacific Ocean,

the explorers had
to halt their dugout canoes

for more than an hour
on the Yellowstone

as a herd swam across
the river in front of them.

And Clark says, as they're
coming down the Yellowstone,

"I saw more buffalo than
I've ever seen before today."

And he tries to give
some sense of the numbers.

Then, a few days later, he says,

"Well, now, today,
I saw more buffalo

than I've ever seen before."

Then, finally, he says,
"I'm not going to write about it

anymore because no one
would believe it,"

that the numbers are
essentially infinite.

"These strangers will be
a people who do not get tired,

"but who will keep
pushing forward,

"going, going all the time.

"They will keep coming, coming.

"Follow nothing that they do,

"but keep your own ways
that I have taught you

as long as you can."

Sweet Medicine.

Native people had been
exchanging animal pelts

for European trade goods
for more than two centuries.

When Lewis and Clark returned

with reports of rivers
teeming with beaver,

fur companies responded by
sending squadrons of trappers,

called mountain men,
into every corner of the West,

all to feed the demand
in New York, Paris, and London

for fashionable hats
made of beaver fur.

And this was
really the first step

in which Indian peoples of
the Far West begin

to become enmeshed and caught up
in this global economy.

And so it made them vulnerable

in ways that they could not
possibly have anticipated.

By the 1830s,
the mountain man era had ended.

The fashion had changed
to silk hats,

and most of the beaver
had been trapped out.

But there were still
tens of millions of buffalo.

Consumers in the East
had now developed

a taste
for salted buffalo tongues.

Thick buffalo robes
became popular

to keep people warm while
riding in their carriages.

Along the Missouri River
and its tributaries,

the fur companies established
dozens of trading posts,

where tribes bartered
buffalo robes and tongues

for goods manufactured
in Europe and the East:

metal pots
to make their lives easier;

colorful glass beads
and woven blankets;

and guns for hunting
or fighting their enemies.

Preparing a buffalo robe for
market took time and hard work,

from painstakingly
scraping away the flesh and fat

to softening the hide

by patiently rubbing it
with cooked bison brains.

The semi-nomadic tribes were
already killing more buffalo

than they needed
for their own subsistence

in order to trade
with agricultural tribes

for corn and squash and tobacco.

Now they killed even more

to meet the demand
of white people far away.

When large steamboats replaced
smaller keelboats and canoes,

the volume of trade
exploded even further.

The first steamboat
to ply the Missouri

returned to St. Louis

loaded down
with stacks of buffalo robes

and 10,000 pounds of tongues.

In one five-year period,
New Orleans handled

more than 750,000 robes
bound for the East.

Many Plains tribes
kept a pictorial calendar

a painted image,

often on a buffalo hide,

depicting the event
they remembered most vividly.

For some, it might be
a battle with their enemies,

a successful hunt,
or the outbreak of a disease.

But one year, they all
recorded the same thing.

They remembered it
as "the year the stars fell."

On November 13th, 1833,

the largest meteor shower
ever witnessed...

An estimated
72,000 shooting stars per hour...

Burst over
much of North America.

Townspeople on the East Coast
were mesmerized by the display.

For people living
in tepees on the open prairie,

the spectacle was overwhelming.

The Kiowas were camped
in the Wichita Mountains.

The stars went crazy in the sky.

It seemed that the world
was coming to an end.

They were awakened
by the light of flashing stars.

They ran out into the...
Out into the false day

and were terrified.

They think the year
and the event as being an omen.

Bad things came after that.

The United States
was pushing westward.

Within 15 years, its boundary
would stretch to the Pacific.

To get there,
all of the overland trails

had to cross the Great Plains,

still controlled by the Native
tribes who lived there.

Americans had different motives
for their migrations,

but the huge bison herds
they encountered

played a role
in everyone's journey.

"I never saw
anything like buffalo meat

"to satisfy hunger.

"So long as there is
buffalo meat,

I do not wish anything else."

Narcissa Whitman.

In 1836,
Narcissa Whitman was headed

to the Pacific Northwest
to help her missionary husband

convert Indigenous people
to Christianity.

Other Americans were heading
to Oregon to establish farms;

to California to pan for gold;
and to Santa Fe for commerce.

The Mormons went to Utah

to find refuge
from religious persecution.

On the way, their leaders
used bleached buffalo skulls

as signposts,
leaving instructions

to those following behind,
indicating prime camping places.

Aristocrats from Europe
were also showing up.

Sir William Drummond Stewart
of Scotland

attended mountain man rendezvous

and brought along the painter
Alfred Jacob Miller.

Prince Maximilian of Wied,
a German ethnographer,

went up the Missouri
to study the Indians,

and hired
the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer

to illustrate
his detailed report.

But Sir St. George Gore
of Ireland came merely to hunt.

His extravagant expedition

cost him
1/4 of a million dollars.

He's got 50 people with him,

most of them
servants and skinners.

He's got six wagons
and 21 carts,

and 112 hunting horses
and 50 dogs.

What it's all about,
of course, is allowing

Gore to kill as many animals
as he possibly can.

During his three years
traversing the West,

Gore killed 1,500 elk,
2,000 deer,

more than a thousand antelope,
500 bears,

and 4,000 bison, leaving
their carcasses on the prairie,

unless he considered part
of the dead animal worthy

of being shipped back home
as a trophy.

His destruction
of wildlife was so wanton,

many of the frontiersmen he
had hired were offended by it,

and Indian tribes complained
to the United States government.

At the end
of his three-year journey,

he and his men decided

they would head down
to the Black Hills,

which hadn't been explored
by white people,

sacred ground for the Lakotas.

So they showed up there,
and they were met by

a couple hundred
of Lakota warriors,

who said, "You've got a choice.

"This is our sacred place.
You can't be here.

"You either fight us
or give us your guns,

give us your supplies,
and head the hell out of here."

The West is
where the American identity is.

What are the things that stand
distinctively for that West,

and, therefore,
stand distinctively

for the American people,
who we are?

What sets us apart
from the Old World?

And they settle
more than anything else

upon these two images,

these two characters
of the Far West:

the American Indian

and the American bison,
the American buffalo.

They became sort of the symbols

of who the emerging
Americans were.

"It is
a melancholy contemplation

"for one who has traveled,
as I have, through these realms

"and have seen this noble animal
in all its pride and glory,

"to contemplate it so rapidly
wasting from the world,

"drawing the irresistible conclusion,

"that its species is
soon to be extinguished,

"and with it
the peace and happiness,

"if not the actual existence,
of the tribes of Indians

"who are joint tenants with them

in the occupancy
of these vast plains."

George Catlin.

The artist
George Catlin spent six years

crisscrossing the West,

painting portraits of Native
people and their environment.

He thrilled at joining
the Lakotas in a bison hunt,

but Catlin still worried

that both the animals
and the Indians

would soon be destroyed.

Then he had a vision.

And what
a splendid contemplation, too,

when one imagines them
as they might in future be seen

by some great protecting
policy of government

preserved in their
pristine beauty and wildness

in a magnificent park,

a nation's park
containing man and beast,

in all the wild and freshness of
their nature's beauty.

But on the Plains,

the nation's relentless
movement westward

was beginning
to hem in the bison

and the native people
who relied on them.

With the westward expansion,

everything had
to get out of the way.

You've probably seen
the old painting,

"Manifest Destiny."

They show everything fleeing

in front of
this horde of wagon trains

and people on foot
and horseback.

When the Europeans come in,
everything that's natural

has to get out of the way.

It just, it's just
a matter of fact.

There is a phrase that,
as settlement moved West,

they were "redeeming
the land from wilderness

by the hand of man."

You're "redeeming"
the wilderness by plowing it,

by cutting the trees down,

by killing the wild animals

and replacing them
with domestic cattle or hogs.

That was the mind-set.

And that is the starkest way
I can try to describe

how different that was from
the Native peoples' view of it,

to live with the land,
that they were part of it;

they weren't superior
to the rest of God's creation.

We saw it differently.

And a lot of people

and a lot of animals
paid a price for it.

More than
a million cattle and sheep

had accompanied the wagon trains

to California, Oregon,
and Santa Fe,

devouring the grasses
along the trails

and spreading diseases
like anthrax to the bison.

In what is now Wyoming,
the overland trails crossed

through the hunting grounds
of the Shoshone.

"Since the white man
has made a road across our land

"and has killed off our game,
we are hungry,

"and there is
nothing for us to eat.

"Our women and children
cry for food,

and we have
no food to give them."

Washakie.

New waves of epidemics
from Europe

had also devastated
Plains tribes.

The Pawnee lost half of
their population to smallpox;

the Mandan, Assiniboine, and
Blackfeet were hit even harder:

only 1/10 of their people
survived the disease.

Kiowa calendars noted one year
as the Smallpox Winter.

The summer of 1849
was remembered

as the "Cramp Sun Dance,"

in which 50% of them
died from cholera,

while others died by
suicide, in pain and despair.

Disease came in waves.

When one in the family got it,
another and another and another,

and it was devastating.

They had a continuous grave.

At the same time,

the government
was forcibly removing

tens of thousands
of Native Americans

from their homelands
in the Midwest and Southeast,

including the Sauk
and the Fox and the Ottawa,

the Seneca and Shawnee,

the Cherokee, Choctaw,
Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole,

transplanting them

into a newly declared
Indian Territory

in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Some of them
began hunting buffalo, too.

In the southwest,
New Mexican ciboleros...

Descendants
of Spanish settlers...

Were also making annual forays
onto the Great Plains

to hunt buffalo.

And from Canada, the Métis...

Descendants of Europeans
and Indigenous people...

Were expanding
their buffalo hunts

across the border
into the Dakotas.

In 1846,
a decade-long drought began,

withering the grasslands.

The bison herds,

already pressured by
the buffalo robe trade,

diminished even more.

A Lakota calendar commemorated

a special ceremony meant
to bring the buffalo back.

The Kiowas prepared
for a great antelope drive,

because the supply of bison meat
was insufficient.

A Blackfeet band marked 1854

as "the year when we ate dogs."

By the end of the 1850s,
the bison had been driven

from all but the interior
portion of the Plains,

where, by the mid-1860s,

an estimated 12 million to
15 million of them still lived.

That's a lot of bison,

12 million to 15 million animals.

There were still
a lot of bison to hunt.

And there would remain to be
a lot of bison there

up until into the 1870s,
when the real hammer fell.

"We saw the first train
of cars that any of us had seen.

"We looked at it
from a high ridge.

"Far off it was very small,

"but it kept coming and growing
larger all the time,

"puffing out smoke and steam.

"As it came on,
we said to each other

that it looked like a white
man's pipe when he was smoking."

Porcupine.

After the Civil War,

Americans set out
with renewed energy

to unite the East and West,

building railroads
to span the continent,

opening up vast areas beyond the
Missouri River for homesteaders,

creating easier access
to distant metropolitan markets

for crops and cattle,

and servicing
the demands of boom towns

that had sprung up
after gold discoveries

in the mountains
of Colorado and Montana.

There are lots of
technologies that

move into the Great Plains
in the 19th Century,

and most of them have
a negative impact on the bison.

But all of this pales
in comparison

to a sort of spasm
of industrial expansion

into the Great Plains
after the Civil War.

Native people
called this newest arrival

"the Iron Horse,"

and the pace of change quickened
as never before.

As the Union Pacific pushed west

across Nebraska
toward California,

the Kansas Pacific
aimed for Denver,

piercing into the heart
of the buffalo range

of the Central Plains.

To feed the hungry crews
laying track,

the railroad company hired

an ambitious and flamboyant
21-year-old Union veteran,

paying him $500 a month
to keep them supplied

with the meat
from twelve buffalo a day.

His name was William F. Cody.

Within a few years, he would
be known by a different name.

During my engagement as a hunter

for the Kansas Pacific,
I killed 4,280 buffalo.

It was not long

before I acquired
a considerable reputation

and the very appropriate name
of "Buffalo Bill"

was conferred upon me
by the railroad hands.

It has stuck with me ever since,

and I have never been ashamed
of it.

To publicize
its progress across the Plains,

the Kansas Pacific promoted
excursion trips

for passengers eager
to have the chance to see...

And shoot at... the buffalo
they were sure to encounter.

A church group
from Lawrence, Kansas,

organized a two-day outing

to raise money
for the congregation.

300 people signed up.

On the second day,
they came upon a herd.

"The buffalo kept pace
with the train

"for at least 1/4 of a mile,

"while the boys blazed away
at them without effect.

"Shots enough were fired
to rout a regiment of men.

"The train stopped, and such
a scrambling and screeching

"was never before heard on
the Plains, as we rushed forth

"to see our first game
lying in his gore.

"I had the pleasure
of first putting hands

"on the dark locks of
the noble monster

"who had fallen so bravely.

"Then came the ladies;
a ring was formed;

"the cornet band gathered around
and played 'Yankee Doodle.'

"I thought that
'Hail to the Chief'

would have done more
honor to the departed."

"When the white men
wanted to build railroads

"or when they wanted
to farm or raise cattle,

"the buffalo
protected the Kiowas.

"They tore up the railroad
tracks and the gardens.

"They chased
the cattle off the ranges.

"The buffalo loved their people

as much as the Kiowas
loved them."

Old Lady Horse.

For decades, Native tribes

had resisted
incursions onto their homelands,

and the army
had built forts in response.

Now more forts were established

and more troops were dispatched
to man them.

Indian warriors attacked
survey crews and road gangs,

sometimes even derailed trains.

The army's retaliations
were ineffective,

and, in 1867, Congress decided
to try a different approach.

Delegations were dispatched
to pursue what some called

"the hitherto untried policy of
conquering with kindness."

That October, more than 5,000
Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahoes,

and Southern Cheyennes

gathered at Medicine Lodge Creek
in Kansas

to hear a proposal
from U.S. officials

intended to end the violence
on the Southern Plains.

Under the government's plan,

the United States
would encourage

white settlement
north of the Arkansas River.

The Indians would move

onto reservations
in what is now Oklahoma,

where they could receive food
and supplies for 30 years,

be provided schools
for their children,

and taught how to farm.

The Kiowa chief Satanta objected.

I want you
to understand what I say.

Write it on paper.

I don't want to settle.

I love to roam
over the prairies.

There I feel free and happy,

but when we settle down,
we grow pale and die.

"Do not ask us
to give up the buffalo

for the sheep,"
Ten Bears of the Comanche added.

"Do not speak of it more."

The peace commissioners
promised that,

south of the Arkansas,

non-Indians would be prohibited
from settlement,

and the tribes could continue
hunting there

"so long," the treaty said,
"as the buffalo may range there

in such numbers
as justify the chase."

Though not every band of
each tribe was represented,

the treaty was signed
and sent to Congress.

The Kiowa calendar for that year
showed an Indian and a white man

shaking hands
near a grove of trees.

The government comes
away from that treaty thinking

that it has set in motion

this transformation of
Indian peoples

from hunting, gathering,
semi-nomadic people to farmers.

The Comanches and Kiowas
come away from that treaty

thinking that
they have now permission

to continue doing
what they have always done,

and therefore
achieving absolutely nothing.

A year later, farther north,

at Fort Laramie on the Platte,

a similar treaty was signed by
some of the Lakota Sioux.

In exchange for the government

abandoning its Army forts

in Wyoming's
Powder River country,

a vast Sioux reservation
was created,

encompassing half of
present-day South Dakota,

including
the sacred Black Hills.

The treaty also contained
a clause stating

the Lakotas were free to hunt
outside the reservation,

so long as there were buffalo.

General
William Tecumseh Sherman,

now in command
of the army in the West,

reluctantly agreed
to the hunting concession.

"This may lead to collisions,"
Sherman wrote his brother,

"but it will not
be long before all the buffaloes

are extinct near
and between the railroads."

"We want to go
on the buffalo hunt

"so long as there are
any buffaloes.

"We are afraid
when we have no meat

"to offer the Great Spirit,

"he will be angry and punish us.

Those buffalo are mine."

Pe-ta-na-sharo.

In 1872, a hunt took place

in southwestern Nebraska.

Under the government's
Peace Policy, the Pawnees

had also been placed
on a reservation,

but were given permission
to leave it

in their annual search
for bison herds,

provided they were chaperoned
by white men,

whose job was to make sure
there were no troubles

with settlers now living

on the Pawnees' old homelands.

Joining the hunt

was a 22-year-old son

of a prominent
Wall Street banker,

George Bird Grinnell.

As a student at Yale,

he had ventured west
for the first time as part

of a paleontology expedition
that unearthed the bones

of extinct animals,
including a pterodactyl

and a tiny eohippus,

the world's first known horse.

He has this incredibly hands-on,

tangible experience
where they discover

a hundred extinct species.

So, for somebody of that era,

he understands,
in a very unique way,

that extinction is something
that's possible.

Now the Pawnees
introduced Grinnell

to some of their sacred rituals
before going after the bison.

"The success of the hunt,"
he wrote, "was supposed

"to depend largely
upon the respect shown

to the buffalo."

He marveled at how disciplined
the Pawnee hunters were,

how skillfully they handled
their horses,

and how the whole tribe celebrated

after the successful hunt.

That night, when he's
sitting around the campfire

with the Pawnee,
he has this epiphany,

and Grinnell was somebody
who, throughout his life,

could see what was coming
before most other people.

Their days are numbered,

and unless some action
on this subject

is speedily taken,
not only by the States

and Territories,
but by the National Government,

these shaggy brown beasts,

these cattle
upon a thousand hills,

will ere long be among
the things of the past.

In the fall of 1872,

tracks for a new railroad...

The Atchison, Topeka,
and Santa Fe...

Reached a small settlement

that had grown up
around Fort Dodge,

on the north shore
of the Arkansas River.

Town builders had
originally hoped

to name it Buffalo City,

but the postal service
turned them down,

since Kansas already had
a town by that name.

So they christened it

Dodge City,
in honor of the nearby fort.

The first construction train
to arrive was delayed

two hours,
waiting for a bison herd

three miles long to pass
in front of it.

Buffalo often grazed
so close to Dodge City,

one merchant shot them
from the fence of his corral

for his hogs to feed on.

But news from the East

was about to transform life

on the Southern Plains
yet again.

Commercial tanners
in Europe, England,

and Philadelphia
had developed a way

to efficiently process
stiff buffalo hides

into a supple
but durable leather,

as good as a cow's hide,
and especially suitable

for the belts used to drive
industrial machines.

There's a shortage of leather.

Leather is
the fifth-largest industry

in the United States,
and so one of the reasons why

this industrial society
reaches out

into the Great Plains
to consume bison hides

is just to feed this appetite
for leather.

Dealers clamored
for as many hides

as they could get and offered

more than $3.00
for each one.

A young Vermonter named
J. Wright Mooar

brought in 305 hides

and made more than $1,000

in a month's time... nearly twice

what an average day worker
back East made in a year.

Word that there was money
to be made

in hides spread quickly,

and soon, more men flocked
to Dodge City...

2,000 of them,
according to one newspaper...

Each dreaming
of striking it rich.

"The whole Western country
went buffalo-wild.

"It was like a gold rush.

"Men left jobs, businesses,

"wives and children.

"There were uncounted millions
of the beasts.

"They didn't belong to anybody.

"If you could kill them,
what they brought was yours.

They were like walking
gold pieces."

Frank Mayer.

Frank Mayer from Pennsylvania

sank everything he owned
into a hunting outfit:

wagons, mules,

camp equipment, and firearms.

They called themselves
"buffalo runners"

because buffalo runner was
kind of a romantic term

that kind of suggested
that there was some fair chase,

sort of fair fight going on.

The notion of galloping up
on a trusty steed

beside a charging buffalo
and killing it

was the romantic notion
of how buffalo were killed.

That's very different,
of course, from how

commercial hunting
actually worked.

For newcomers, Frank Mayer said,

"Shooting from the back
of a running horse

was always uncertain."

It meant too many wasted shots,

too many wounded buffalo,

too many carcasses of whatever
bison he managed to kill

scattered
across greater distances.

And the rifles they used
often required

several shots to bring
a buffalo down.

"I was a businessman,"
Mayer said.

"I wanted efficiency."

One hunter wrote a letter

to the Sharps Rifle
Manufacturing Company

in Connecticut,
asking for a better gun.

Sharps responded
with a series of new models,

as did other manufacturers.

The rifles weighed
12 to 16 pounds,

had longer and wider barrels
that could handle

larger amounts of gunpowder
to fire heavier slugs

of lead with great accuracy

over a distance of 400 yards,

even reach targets

more than a thousand yards away.

The most effective
killing technique

was called a "stand."

A hunter carefully
positioned himself

about 200 to 300 yards
downwind from the herd.

Then he picked out
a lead buffalo,

took careful aim, and fired,

usually shooting for the lungs.

They don't shoot
for the shoulder.

They shoot it through the lungs.

When you shoot their lungs,
it would tend to not move far.

It would stand there,
get woozy, fall over dead.

The other animals see
the lead animal laying there,

and they don't want to move.
Now, if they started to drift,

you'd shoot whoever is out
in the lead of that drift...

anything you can do to not

induce panic,

and they would just
whittle away at these things.

Bang!

Another one goes down.
They mill around

and they're still not spooked.

This was short-circuiting

10,000 years...

of defense mechanism
that had evolved over time.

Native people who saw
the new buffalo guns in action

said it "shoots today
and kills tomorrow."

Kills tomorrow?

That's exactly what
was happening.

It was killing tomorrow
for the bison

and for the people
who relied on it.

The white men hired hunters

to do nothing but kill
the buffalo.

Up and down the plains
these men ranged,

shooting sometimes as many
as a hundred a day.

Behind them came

the skinners with their wagons.

They piled the hides
into the wagons

until they were full

and then took their loads
to the railroad stations.

It was a harvest.

We were the harvesters.

We never killed
all the buff we could,

but only as many
as our skinners could handle.

The skinners went to work,

stripping the hide
off the carcasses

from the neck down.

Some outfits also took
some of the meat for sale.

Most just removed the tongues,

worth 25 cents each,
and left everything else...

600 to 800 pounds of meat,

along with the hooves
and the head and the horns...

To rot.

"Where there were myriads
of buffalo the year before,

there were now myriads
of carcasses."

"The air was foul

"with a sickening stench,
and the vast plain,

"which only a short 12 months
before teemed with animal life,

was a dead,
solitary, putrid desert."

Colonel Richard Irving Dodge.

This is
the Industrial Revolution

arriving on the magnificent
Great Plains.

They were turning it
into a... a factory floor.

You know, they... instead
of assembling something, though,

they were
disassembling something.

They were disassembling
an animal and just taking

a certain part of it
and leaving the rest.

And then the conveyer belt
was the railroads

that would take
the disassembled part back

to run a machine
on the East Coast.

It was a factory, and the...
And the buffalo hunters,

whatever we might want
to think about them,

they were, in essence, you know,
they were factory workers.

It had this metronomic,

industrial beat to it.

Relentless, relentless,

relentless.

More than
a million hides made their way

East from the southern Plains
before the end

of 1873.

Even that number did not account

for the actual damage
to the bison.

If they shot the buffalo
more than once,

that could destroy the hide.

If the skinners were
not good at their work,

the skinners could
destroy the hide.

If the hides were staked out
and there was a rainstorm,

the hides could rot.

Insects came along
and chewed on the hides.

So, by one estimate, it...

You had to kill about
four buffalo to get one hide...

Hide to market, so not only
was the carcass wasted,

but even the hides were wasted
in this industry.

Uncounted numbers
of wounded buffalo

wandered off and died.

So did motherless calves.

It was a business
proposition for them.

A hide's a hide.

If you shoot the mother
of a calf,

what the hell?

But those calves,

I would venture
every one of them died.

They don't survive if they
don't have their mother.

It was a ugly, ugly business.

"With 5,000 rifles a day
leveled at him,

"it wasn't long till there was
very little of him,

or her, left to shoot."

"Within a year,
or a year and a half

"after I got into the business,

"we hit what I now know
is called diminishing returns.

"We called it
a scarcity of buffalo,

"and my dreams of fortune...
They grew dimmer and dimmer

as the months went by."

Frank Mayer.

The hide yards
at Dodge City now stood empty.

But south
of the Arkansas River...

In the area reserved
by the Medicine Lodge Treaty

solely for Native hunting...

Massive herds of buffalo
still roamed.

The Vermonter J. Wright Mooar
crossed over to investigate.

"For five days," he said,

"we rode through and camped

in a mobile sea
of living buffalo."

Back at Fort Dodge,
he and other hunters

asked the commander
what the army would do

if they trespassed
onto the treaty lands.

"If I were a buffalo hunter,"
the officer replied,

"I would hunt buffalo
where the buffalo are."

The military
in the West certainly had

a motive to do what they could
to eliminate as many bison

as they could because they
understood the obvious,

that the bison were key
to the Native economy.

If you cut the legs from under
that economy, then you're not

going to have much resistance
from Native people.

The army was a facilitator
in the destruction of the bison.

They didn't do it themselves,
but they certainly helped it

and supported it.

I think it was
a deliberate policy

of the U.S. government
for the bison to be destroyed.

It was not something
that they wrote down

and propagated
through legislation.

But, I think, through all sorts
of informal practices

and lots of winking and nudging,

the destruction of the buffalo
is something that was...

Was very much encouraged.

"The Arkansas was called
the dead line,

"south of which
no hunter should go,

"but as buffalo grew fewer
in number,

"we gazed longingly
across the sandy wastes

"that marked the course
of that river.

"The oftener we looked,
the more eager

"we became to tempt fate.

"Even the sky looked more
inviting in that direction.

So, we crossed over."

Billy Dixon.

There are
a couple of army officers

who write to people
in the East, and they say,

"Look, we've got to put
a stop to this.

"You're causing a lot of misery,

"which may just create
more violence

"than solving the problem

of violence
in the Great Plains."

In early 1874,

Congressman Greenbury
Lafayette Fort of Illinois

proposed legislation
making it "unlawful

"for any person
who is not an Indian

"to kill, wound, or in any way

"destroy any female buffalo,
of any age,

"found at large
within the boundaries

of the Territories
of the United States."

Reformers
like Representative Fort

had been galvanized
by reports of the slaughter

underway on the southern Plains.

The American Society
for the Prevention

of Cruelty to Animals

was also campaigning

for something to be done.

But the Secretary
of the Interior,

Columbus Delano, had already
made his position clear.

I would not seriously regret

the total disappearance
of the buffalo

from the western prairies,
in its effect on the Indians,

regarding it rather
as a means of hastening

their sense of dependence
upon the products of the soil

and their own labors.

When there was a desire

to connect the East Coast
and the West Coast,

there were
two great impediments.

One was bison,
the other was Indigenous people,

and they thought
they could solve the second

by eliminating the first.

It was kind of a "two-fer."

Arguing against
the bill's passage,

Congressman James Garfield
of Ohio said,

"It may be possible
that in our mercy

to the buffalo,
we may be cruel to the Indian."

Eliminating the herds, he added,
would "be the best thing which

could happen for the betterment
of our Indian question."

To Congressman Fort,

that argument was absurd.

"I am not in favor," he said,

"of civilizing the Indian

by starving him to death."

In the end, the House passed
the buffalo protection bill

and sent it to the Senate,
which also voted in favor of it.

I'm actually surprised
the bill passed,

given the times, but it did.

And it went to Grant's desk
and, of course,

Grant would be listening
to his Secretary of the Interior

and so he didn't actually
veto it, but Congress recessed,

and so, with not signing it,
he, in effect,

killed the bill.

It was clear

the American government
would not defend

the American buffalo.

It doesn't
really matter whether it was

an official policy
or a secret policy

or no policy at all.

It had the same effect
for the bison,

who were eliminated,
and for the people

who, for thousands of years,
had depended on those animals.

The U.S. government made
treaties with the Indians

when they wanted something
and it was convenient.

And the second that
the treaty was inconvenient

and they wanted something else,
they broke the treaty.

And that pattern permeates
the history

of the United States government
with Indigenous peoples.

In 1874, things got worse.

Lieutenant Colonel
George Armstrong Custer led

an expedition
into the Black Hills,

an area considered sacred
by the Lakota

and reserved exclusively
for them by treaty.

A prospector
Custer brought along

started searching
for gold there.

Meanwhile, farther south,

hide hunters continued
to cross the Arkansas River

into the buffalo range
supposedly off-limits to whites

and brazenly established
outposts to keep themselves

supplied with ammunition
and whatever else they needed

to continue
their deadly business.

"Your people make big talk

"and sometimes make war
if an Indian kills

"a white man's ox
to keep his wife

"and children from starving.

"What do you think
my people ought to do

"when they see their cattle...
The buffalo...

Killed by your race
when they are not hungry?"

Little Robe.

"The Indians sensed that we were

"taking away their birthright

"and that with every boom
of a buffalo rifle,

"their tenure on their homeland
became weakened,

"and that eventually,
they would have

"no homeland and no buffalo.

"So they did what you
and I would do

"if our existence
were jeopardized:

they fought."

Frank Mayer.

Incensed
by the treaty violations

in the southern
and northern Plains,

warriors from the Lakota, Cheyenne,

Arapahoe, Kiowa, and Comanche

struck back,
raiding stagecoaches,

wagon trains, and homesteads.

Among the Quahada band
of Comanches was

a tall 26-year-old,
who was already rising

in leadership, named Quanah.

He had been born near
the sacred Wichita Mountains,

the oldest son
of a prominent chief

and a white woman,
Cynthia Ann Parker,

who had been taken captive
as a child

and adopted
into the Comanche tribe.

In 1860, while Quanah

and his father and most
of the other warriors were gone,

Texas Rangers overran
their village,

killed a number of people,

and took his mother
and baby sister into custody.

It was a massacre,
but it wasn't a famous thing

you read about in Texas history.

They eventually took her back
to her... her people,

but she didn't want to go.

She never wanted to go back

because she was Comanche.

Cynthia tried several times

to rejoin the Comanches
without success.

She lost her young daughter
to pneumonia.

Unable to live among her people,

Cynthia died in despair.

Her son Quanah had already
distinguished himself

with his fearless courage,
leading attacks on Texans,

against whom he harbored
an implacable hatred

for kidnapping
his mother and sister.

He had attended the Medicine
Lodge Treaty negotiations,

which the Quahadas had
adamantly refused to sign.

For seven years,

they had stayed away
from the reservation,

and Quanah took part
in skirmishes

with the soldiers sent
to force them in.

Now, at the yearly Sun Dance,

a war against the hide hunters
was being planned.

Quanah knew that they had

to destroy the buffalo hunters.

It becomes a matter of defense,

of defending your people,
of defending your family,

of defending the buffalo.

A Comanche
medicine man named Isatai

announced that in a vision,
he had been given special powers

to help the tribes retake
their homelands

and restore the old ways.

"Isatai was making
big talk at that time.

"He says, 'God told me

"'we are going to kill
lots of white men.

"'I will stop the bullets
in their guns.

"'Bullets will not pierce
our shirts.

We will kill them all.'"

Quanah.

With Quanah and Isatai leading,

more than 300 Comanche, Kiowa,

and Cheyenne set off
for Adobe Walls,

a trading post
in the Texas Panhandle

servicing the buffalo hunters
who were trespassing.

Twenty-nine people were there
when the Indians attacked

at dawn on June 27, 1874.

Two white men were killed
in the early moments,

as hide hunters who had been
sleeping under their wagons

scrambled to defend themselves

before taking shelter
in the buildings.

Billy Dixon helped
drive off the attack.

For the first
half-hour, the Indians

were reckless and daring enough
to ride up and strike the doors

with the butts of their guns.

Finally, the buffalo hunters
all got straightened out

and were firing
with deadly effect.

The Indians stood up
against this for a while,

but gradually began falling
back, as we were emptying

rawhide saddles
entirely too fast

for Indian safety.

Seeing a group
of Indians on a bluff

more than three-quarters
of a mile away,

the hunters urged Dixon
to take a shot

with his big Sharps
buffalo rifle.

"I took careful aim and pulled
the trigger," he said.

"We saw an Indian fall
from his horse."

The bullet had struck
before the rider heard

the sound of Dixon's rifle.

Fifteen warriors had died
in the initial attack.

Quanah was wounded,
but kept fighting.

"All the Cheyennes were very mad
at Isatai," Quanah remembered.

They shouted, "What's the matter
with your medicine?"

One Cheyenne beat him
with a riding whip.

After the battle of Adobe Walls,

Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne,

and Arapaho warriors regrouped

and embarked on new raids

across Texas, Colorado,

and parts of New Mexico
and Kansas

that left 190 white people dead.

President Grant
put the reservations

under military control.

Any Indians who did not return

were to be considered "hostile"

and hunted down.

On the morning
of September 28, 1874,

Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie

and 13 companies
of cavalry and infantry

reached the rim
of Palo Duro Canyon

in the Texas Panhandle.

Peering down, he saw
an array of encampments

spread along the canyon floor.

He ordered his men
down a narrow trail,

and they began their charge.

The villagers fled up
the canyon walls,

while warriors covered
their retreat.

Not many people died
in the battle

of Palo Duro Canyon, but what
Mackenzie was able to do

was they had left their tepees,

their winter food supplies,

and their horse herd,
and he gathered up

the food supplies
and the tepees,

set them on fire.

Then, he takes

this pony herd of 1,450 horses.

He lets his Indian auxiliaries
have the pick

of about 150 of those horses,

and then he has his forces

shoot down all
the remaining animals.

It was kind of a scorched-earth
strategy: "I'm not going

to keep these horses.
We're just gonna kill 'em."

We have elders today who say

that if you go to that site

that you can still hear...

You can still hear those horses

and the destruction
and the... and the crying

that went forth,
um, so long ago.

For the rest
of the fall and into the winter,

the army's columns patrolled
the Panhandle,

ceaselessly pursuing
any straggling bands

who didn't return
to the reservation.

Many of them,
reduced to eating roots

and rodents to survive,

began to starve.

In February of 1875,

the last of the Kiowas came
in to the reservation

at Fort Sill, Oklahoma,

then the Cheyenne in March,

followed by some Comanches.

By May, only Quanah

and his 400 Quahadas...

Who still had some horses...

Remained free.

It's said
that Quanah went up on a hill

and drew a buffalo robe
over his head

and was waiting for signs,
for direction.

It's said that a wolf came along

and howled and took off

in the direction of Fort Sill.

It's said that an eagle
flew overhead

and began flying
in the direction of Fort Sill.

Quanah took those

as signs to finally go

to Fort Sill
with the other Quahadas.

With the Indians
of the southern Plains confined

to reservations,
the hide hunters...

3,000 of them, by one estimate...

Went back to work.

They considered 1876

"a banner year for buffalo"

in the Texas Panhandle.

John Cook, who had left Kansas
to join the hunt,

killed 88 buffalo in one stand,

alternating between two rifles

when one overheated.

A slight feeling
of remorse would come over me

for the part I was taking
in this greatest

of all hunts to the death.

"As I walked through
where the carcasses lay

the thickest,"
he later recounted,

"I could not help but think
that I had done wrong

to make such a slaughter
for the hides alone."

Then I would justify myself

and pictured a white schoolhouse
on that knoll yonder,

where a maid was teaching
future generals and statesmen

the necessity
of becoming familiar

with the three Rs.

Back on that plateau,

I could see a courthouse
of a thriving county seat.

Some of these days, we will hear

the whistle and shriek
of a locomotive

as she comes through the gap.

And not long until we can hear
the lowing of cattle

and the bleating sheep

and the morning crow
of the barnyard rooster.

Frank Mayer was
less sentimental about it all.

Maybe we runners
served our purpose in helping

abolish the buffalo; maybe it
was our ruthless harvesting

of him which telescoped
the control of the Indian

by a decade or maybe more.

Or maybe I am just rationalizing.

Maybe we were just a greedy lot

who wanted to get ours,
and to hell with posterity,

the buffalo, and anyone else,

just so we kept our scalps on

and our money pouches filled.

I think maybe that's
the way it was.

By 1877...

Only three years
after the fight at Adobe Walls...

The immense herds
south of the Arkansas

had been reduced
to a few scattered groups.

By 1878,

even those were disappearing.

Ranches, homesteads,
and small towns were starting

to fill what had been
the buffalo's domain.

For every Indian in the West,

there were now 40 whites.

The hide hunters' trading posts
in Texas began closing.

Dodge City was turning
into a raucous cow town,

where live cattle...
Not buffalo hides...

Were being loaded
onto the railroad cars.

We had killed the golden goose.

Presently, all I saw was
rotting red carcasses

or bleaching white bones.

And the stench was so great
that at a mile away

from a stand, you could smell it

and be forced to hold your nose.

Only the coyotes and wolves
didn't seem to mind.

To bolster his reservation's

paltry food supply,
Quanah got permission

from the army to lead
300 Comanches

and Kiowas on a buffalo hunt.

They moved south,
across familiar territory

that now seemed
an alien landscape,

littered with bison carcasses.

You know, it's
in such a short span of time

where the buffalo are plentiful,

where that way of life
is going so strong.

And...

I can only imagine...

the scenes of carnage...

the rotting smells...

while en route

to search for buffalo...

and so, on our lands

are all these visual reminders

of what others had done to us

and to a way of life.

Life was over, in a sense,

you know, and to see
such a thing is to see

the death of a god.

In disbelief,
Quanah's group pushed on

to Palo Duro Canyon,
which had always been

a reliable refuge for the bison.

Instead of buffalo,
they found a herd of cattle.

The rancher who owned them
rode out to parley.

Charles Goodnight had fought
against Indians

as a Texas Ranger, and after
the battle of Palo Duro Canyon,

he established
the first cattle ranch there.

Goodnight actually
rode out to meet them

when he saw them coming.

He knew that Comanches
respected bravery.

They respected that kind
of strength,

and he rode out to meet them
to, hopefully, avoid

any certain violent conflict.

He said, "I'm Charles Goodnight

and I just moved my ranch
down here from Colorado."

He didn't want to say
he was a Texan

because the Comanches and Texans

were mortal enemies.

So Goodnight and Quanah
start talking

with each other,
and they eventually

set up something
of their own treaty.

Goodnight told them
there were no longer any buffalo

in the canyon, but they
could continue their hunt

to see for themselves
that it was true.

In the meantime,
if they stayed peaceful,

Goodnight said Quanah's party
could kill two of his cows

every other day so they had
something to eat.

So Quanah went up
to look for the buffalo

and there was none,
and... and then he realized

that his way of life and, um,

what they depended on,
it was no more.

Back on their reservation

near the Wichita Mountains,
the Kiowas recorded

the summer of 1879

as the "horse-eating" time.

"The buffalo saw

"that their day was over.

They could protect
their people no longer."

"The Kiowas were camped
on the north side

"of Mount Scott.

"One young woman got up
very early in the morning.

"The dawn mist was still rising
from Medicine Creek,

"and as she looked
across the water,

"peering through the haze,

"she saw the last
buffalo herd appear

like a spirit dream."

"Straight to Mount Scott
the leader of the herd walked.

"Behind him came the cows
and their calves,

"and the few young males
who had survived.

"As the woman watched,

the face
of the mountain opened."

"Inside Mount Scott,

"the world was green and fresh,

"as it had been
when she was a small girl.

"The rivers ran clear,

"not red.

"Into this world of beauty

"the buffalo walked,

never to be seen again."

Old Lady Horse.

Old Lady Horse.

I want to cry
when I think of her.

I see what she saw,

a farewell
of tragic significance.

It's a shadow within a shadow.

It's a dark,
massive animal vitality

moving inexorably

away from existence.

And it has,
for every Native American

man, woman, and child...
A significance

that probably is ineffable.

"I want to hunt in this place.

"I want you to turn back
from here.

"If you don't, I will fight you.

"I will remain what I am

"until I die, a hunter,

"and when there are
no buffalo or other game,

"I will send my children to hunt

"and live on prairie mice,
for where

"an Indian is shut up
in one place,

his body becomes weak."

Sitting Bull.

On the northern Plains,

where the railroad
had not yet arrived,

the buffalo were
still plentiful.

The worst sentence
that can ever be written

about Native people is,

"And then gold was discovered
on their land."

It happened in California.

It happened in Georgia,
with the Cherokee.

It happened in Montana.

It happened in the Black Hills.

The Custer expedition
discovers gold,

and the Gold Rush
to the Black Hills is on.

The Lakota are enraged

because, once again,
this is a direct violation

of an explicit treaty provision.

The U.S. government simply
takes the Black Hills,

orders the tribes
onto a smaller reservation,

and deems all of the tribes
that are not compliant

with that, new edict

to be enemies
of the U.S. government.

Large bands
of the Lakota had refused

to stay on their reservation
and went to hunt

in the rich buffalo ranges
of Wyoming's Powder River

and the eastern plains
of Montana.

They included the Hunkpapas,

led by a chief whose name,

Tatanka Iyotake,

describes
an intractable buffalo,

resolute in the face
of his enemies...

Sitting Bull.

The Lakotas attacked
the survey crews

and military escorts
working to extend

the Northern Pacific Railway westward

into the heart
of their hunting grounds.

A military campaign
to drive them back

to the reservation
had resulted in disaster,

when George Armstrong Custer

and more than 200 members
of his 7th Cavalry

were annihilated
on the Little Bighorn

by Sitting Bull and his allies

in 1876.

The army's response was
the same as it had been

a relentless pursuit

that within a year
forced the surrender

of one band after another.

But Sitting Bull and his people

had escaped across
the border into Canada,

beyond the reach
of American troops,

where he intended to continue
living off the buffalo.

By 1880,

the Canadian herd was gone, too.

Sitting Bull's people
began to starve.

In 1881, he led

his 167 followers south,

across the border,

and surrendered.

At the Standing Rock reservation,

near the spot where he was born,

Sitting Bull composed
his own song.

"A warrior I have been,"
he sang.

"Now it is all over.

A hard time I have."

That same year,

the Northern Pacific reached
Miles City

in Montana Territory.

Soon, 5,000 hide hunters

and skinners were spilling
over the plains,

from the Yellowstone River
to the Upper Missouri,

where they set up what
one army lieutenant called

"a cordon of camps,
blocking the great ranges

"and rendering it impossible

for scarcely
a single bison to escape."

The killing commenced

all over again.

Meanwhile, in New York,

31-year-old George Bird Grinnell

had become editor
of "Forest and Stream,"

a publication
for hunters and fishermen

that he was prodding
to take on issues

of conservation
with more urgency.

During the hide-hunting

on the southern Plains,
he had advocated for policies

he called "just" and "honest"
toward Native Americans

that would, he wrote,
"conscientiously aid

"in the increase of the buffalo,
instead of furthering

its foolish
and reckless slaughter."

Now Grinnell turned
his attention

to what was unfolding
in Montana.

Up to within a few years ago,

the valley
of the Yellowstone River

has been a magnificent
hunting ground.

The progress of
the Northern Pacific Railroad,

however, has changed all this.

The buffalo will disappear

unless steps are taken
to protect it there.

This is the era

of the myth of inexhaustibility,

the belief that the West
is so vast,

that the resources are so vast

that they
can never be exhausted.

But it was so much in front
of them, what was happening,

that I think they began
to figure it out.

It became more and more
difficult to find buffalo,

and there were ominous signs.

Weird things began to happen,

like they would find herds
that were comprised

entirely of calves.

But there also was
a capacity to deny

and to believe
that they had just gone

over the next ridge line,
gone into the next territory,

and so all of that
kind of mixes together.

In Miles City,

in the fall of 1883,

the hide hunters prepared
for another winter

on the Plains, believing there
must still be plenty of buffalo

between the Yellowstone
and Missouri Rivers.

They came back in the spring

with almost nothing to show
for their efforts.

There are people in Miles City

who had been hide hunters,
and they're simply

lolling around, waiting
for the return of the herds.

They still thought there has
to be some somewhere.

When they had finished, they
didn't know they'd finished.

They felt that, well, it can't
be over... and it was over.

In 1884,

the total number
of hides brought

to the Northern Pacific fit

in a single boxcar.

"One by one, we runners

"put up our buffalo rifles,

"sold them, gave them away,

"or kept them for other hunting,

"and left the ranges.

"And there settled over them

"a vast quiet.

The buffalo was gone."

Frank Mayer.

There is no...

no story anywhere
in world history

that involves
as large a destruction

of wild animals as happened
in North America

in the Western United States,
in particular,

between 1800 and about 1890.

I mean, it is
the largest destruction

of animal life discoverable
in modern world history.

Why Americans
are so destructive,

I think, is
an important question to ask.

Why is that part of our story?

Why is that part of our history?

When the hide hunters
went broke,

some turned to killing
other animals for the market,

like antelope, elk,

and grizzly bears.

With wolf pelts
worth $2.00 each

in New York City,
some hunters began lacing

bison carcasses with strychnine,

which poisoned not only wolves,
but other scavengers:

coyotes, foxes,

bobcats, skunks,

vultures, ravens, eagles.

Other buffalo hunters left

to pursue other work.

Native people had no choice.

They had to stay,
and without buffalo meat

to supplement their meager
government rations,

many starved.

On the Blackfeet reservation,

an inspector checked
on 23 lodges in one village.

He reported seeing a rabbit
being cooked in one

and a steer hoof in another.

The other 21 lodges
had no food at all.

Six hundred Blackfeet...

A quarter of the tribe...
Perished

during that winter of famine.

But that's really
what the government wanted,

was for Indian people to have
to turn to the government.

And they had to take away
all of the resources

for that to happen.

It was devastating,

and it was heartbreaking.

We had the songs,
but no buffalo to sing 'em to.

It's like a spiritual trauma.

"Nobody believed, even then,

"that the white man could
kill all the buffalo,

"even when he did not
want the meat.

"Not believing their own eyes,

"our hunters rode very far
looking for buffalo,

"so far away
that even if they found a herd,

we could not have reached it
in half a moon."

"'Nothing, we found nothing, '

"they told us, and then, hungry,

"they stared
at the empty plains,

as though dreaming."

Pretty Shield.

"A cold wind blew
across the prairie

when the last buffalo fell,"
Sitting Bull said.

"A death wind for my people."

It was devastating for us.

That would have been
the most heartbreaking thing.

I couldn't imagine it.

I couldn't imagine the people,

what they were...

What they went through,

especially a father,
saying, "I got to...

"I got to take care
of my children.

"I got to take care of my clan,
I got to take care

of my society,
and I can't do it."

Now a new
buffalo business sprang up.

Millions of buffalo skulls
and bones

were bleaching
under the prairie sun,

and it turned out
there was money

to be made from them, too.

Companies in the East
offered an average

of $8.00 a ton
for bones

they could grind into fertilizer

or use in refining sugar.

Buffalo horns were turned
into buttons,

combs, and knife handles.

Hooves became glue.

Homesteaders in Nebraska
and Kansas...

Desperate for cash
because drought was withering

their crops... turned
to harvesting the skulls

and skeletons
still littering the Plains.

One entrepreneur in Texas
stacked mounds of bones along

the tracks of the Fort Worth
and Denver Railroad

and made $25,000.

"Buffalo bones,"
a Kansas newspaper reported,

"are now legal tender
in Dodge City."

A company in St. Louis processed

more than one million tons

of bison bones.

The Michigan Carbon Works became

Detroit's largest industry.

In the end, the bone trade

would generate more profits...
For the bone pickers,

the railroads,
and the industries...

Than the buffalo hides ever had.

Even what remained of them

was being taken away
from their native ground.

It was... it was, like,

grave-robbing, in a way.

It just strikes me as... as...

a society trying to clean up,

you know, a crime scene.

This is the murder of buffalo,

our brothers, and let's get rid
of that, let's hide it.

Let's get not only
the buffalo out,

let's get the bones out, too.

So they took everything from us,

and we understood that

as a way of killing us off.

They're taking away
our grocery store, and that's

what they did; the buffalo
was our grocery store.

They killed the spirit
of the buffalo,

in some cases, we thought.

But that's why our prayers
got stronger.

That's why our people got
stronger; they had to.

If they didn't, we would
have been killed off

like the buffalo.

By 1885,

a species once numbering
in the tens of millions

had been reduced to fewer
than a thousand...

Mostly small groups
of a dozen or less,

scattered in different corners
across the West.

Even those survivors
were under assault

from any hunters
who could find them,

looking now for trophy heads

to hang on someone's wall.

The American buffalo was

on the brink of extinction.

But in a handful of places,

people had begun trying
to rescue a few bison

and start small, private herds.

In the Texas Panhandle,
Charles Goodnight,

at the urging of his wife Molly,
had brought home

two buffalo calves,
which she was nurturing.

In northwestern Montana,

a young Pend d'Oreille Indian
named Latatí

had herded six calves
from the Great Plains

over the Rocky Mountains
to the Flathead reservation.

In South Dakota,

Fred Dupuis and Good Elk Woman...

A French-Canadian rancher
and his Lakota wife...

Had saved five calves
from slaughter,

bringing them home
in a buckboard.

And in a remote corner

of the recently created
Yellowstone National Park,

the last free-roaming
bison herd in the United States

had found a semblance
of sanctuary,

though, even there,
poachers were beginning

to whittle their numbers down.

At the same time,

George Bird Grinnell
had begun a campaign

to provide the park...
And its buffalo...

The protection they both needed

for their survival.

"We have seen
the Indian and the game

"retreat before the white man
and the cattle

"and beheld the tide
of settlement move forward,

"which threatens before long

"to leave no portion
of our vast territory

"unbroken by the farmer's plow

"or untrodden by his flocks.

"There is one spot left,

"a single rock

"about which this tide
will break,

"and past which it will sweep,

"leaving it undefiled

"by the unsightly traces
of civilization.

"Here,

"in this Yellowstone Park,

"the large game of the West
may be preserved

"from extermination

in this,
their last refuge."

George Bird Grinnell.