|
|
|
|
|
|
For millennia, buffalo provided Prairie First Nations not only meat but also hides essential for surviving cold winters. Prairie buffalo had once numbered 30 to 200 million. Yet First Nations peoples were frugal amid plenty, killing only what they needed and using every part of the animal, from the horns to the tail hairs. The railway’s arrival to the American West enabled trappers, settlers and sports tourists to overhunt there. By the 1870s, American trappers were shipping hundreds of thousands of buffalo hides eastward each year; over 1.5 million were packed aboard trains and wagons in the winter of 1872-73 alone. As well, some US army generals ordered soldiers to shoot buffalo to deny Native Americans a source of food. |
By 1880, only a few thousand buffalo remained in the US or Canada. The widespread hunger caused by the destruction of the buffalo stocks forced many Canadian Indigenous leaders to sign unfavourable treaties with the Canadian government, in order to obtain rations for their hungry communities. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|