Author: S.C. Gwynne

“Surprisingly, only a few voices cried out against the slaughter of the buffalo, which had no precedent in human history. Mostly people didn’t trouble themselves about the consequences. It was simply capitalism working itself out, the exploitation of another natural resource. There was another, better explanation for the lack of protest, articulated best by General Phil Sheridan, then commander of the Military Division of the Missouri. ‘These men [hunters] have done in the last two years … more to settle the vexed Indian question than the entire regular army has done in the last thirty years,’ he said. ‘They are destroying the Indians’ commissary … For the sake of a lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle and the festive cowboy.’ Killing the Indians’ food was not just an accident of commerce; it was a deliberate political act.”

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