The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Studies in Environment and History)

I am surprised it has taken me so long to get around to reading it. There is nothing to detract from this work and the ideas drawn out in detail and with plenty of references are worthy of much more research. In that sense it is seminal as I can see many ideas being worked on in even more probing research. This compliments other authors who have written about the disruptions that began in the East as cultural change began to cross the continent. While others have worked strictly on the political failures of the indigenous North American people as world powers jostled and used them, this is the first time I have seen a treatment of the cultural distress and compensation that reduced the indigenous cultures to utter dependency on forces outside their control. Of course the biological aspects of the bison are pivotal to understanding that final dependency and the effects on the landscape. There is a lot here to think about, and it's about time. I highly recommend this book. Oh, and those who have posted negative reviews, I don't get what your problem is.

informative

A good book that chronicles the destruction of the Bison.

Isenberg is brilliant and we're lucky to have him out there visiting libraries, sifting through archives, pondering predicaments, and typing up a wonderful book like this one. I came to it trying to understand Columbus Delano's unravelling of the 1868 Peace Treates, the mining exploration of the Black Hills which he ordered in 1872, and his opposition to the 1874 legislation that could have saved the Northern herd. Also I want to understand the effects of the widespread corruption within the Department of the Interior ("venal" is Isenberg's word) and whether the War Department would have been more fair in their dealings with Native Americans. I am still not completely satisfied on those issues and will continue to search, but Isenberg provides more on Delano than any other source I have come across.Isenbergs strongest point is analysis of the nomad culture that rose to prominance over the settled, agricultural Missouri River villages beginning with the acquisition of the horse and culminating after the smallpox epidemics of 1780-82 inverted the power relationship and left the nomads "virtually unchallenged for authority in the plains." He points a telescopic lens at the nomadic culture and offers detailed analysis from a refreshingly distant, unromanticized perspective, for instance bringing to light other studies that demonstrate "mammal hunting is the least reliable of subsistence sources." It was a tenuous existence, born out of the biological devastation of small pox, and knocked down repeatedly by further epidemics. In 1837, there were mortality rates of up to 90% in one tribe. "Atomization" is the word Isenberg uses to describe the devastating longterm effect this caused. He quotes Denig from the 1850s: "Their former good order and flourishing condition deranged, they are no more the same people. Their tempers are soured and all their fiece passions raised against the authors of these evils."Unfortunately, Isenberg does not continue this thread beyond the 1850s. During the important post Civil War era, his attention largely shifts to the Euroamericans and his observations there are instructive but incomplete. In 1889, Hornaday included a treatment of the debate in congress over legislation to protect the bison and Isenberg digs deeper on the same subject, but he seems to write without regard to his previous chapters. I would like to read his analysis of the nomads during the 1860s and 1870s. One gets a sense that he might consider this too hot too handle. Perhaps Isenberg feels pressured by his cultural surroundings -- late twentieth century academia -- and self-censors. His tone begins to veer toward the self-righteous and there are some hip-shots at the usual easy targets like Custer (attributed with having "led" the expedition into the Black Hills with no mention that it was ordered by Delano) Kit Carson (killed Navajo sheep and Isenburg leaves it at that) and Sherman (who by his own account was powerless 1870-76, encompassing the same period as the slaughter of the Southern herd.) Like so many other writers on the subject, Isenberg seems attracted to the idea of blaming the army, though the sentiment is undermined by evidence he provides, such as letters written by General Hazen and Lt. Bracket deploring the slaughter of the Southern herd. Isenberg faults Colonel Dodge for not stopping hunters, but the Medicine Lodge Treaty was administered by the Secretary of Interior Delano, who claimed that Euroamerican hunters were not excluded from hunting south of the Arkansas River.In 1832, George Catlin already forsaw the threat to the buffalo and proposed a "nation's Park" inhabited by both bison and the Indians that hunted them "[that]might in the future be seen (by some great protecting policy of the government) preserved..." Isenberg seems to favor Catlin's voice over all other clamor on the subject but he holds his cards close. He maintains a contemporary academic distance which can sometimes be a great tool and othertimes seem as if he looking through some cloudy pince-nez. It could be instructive to follow Catlin's idea to its hypothetical conclusion-- what-if?-- and investigate what such a thing might have looked like, to fully understand what was lost. Catlin's proposal might seem "patrician" but Isenberg leaves little doubt that such measures were necessary: protection of the greatly outnumbered Native Americans from Euroamerican settlers, territorial politicians, miners, and other Native Americans, as well as starvation and disease; protection of Euroamericans from raids by nomads who were devastated by disease and an ephemeral hunting subsistence; protection of bison from the crossfire of both nomads and Euroamericans to ensure a sustainable population.This is a great book but there's still more to say on the subject. We need to keep trying to understand.

A most misleading book, starting with the picture on the front cover. The bison did not go extinct because the Indians over-hunted them, they were living with bison for thousands of years. The white poachers cannot be blamed either. There was a blatant policy of the US government to eradicate the bison in order to deprive Indians from their food source and drive them to extinction. By a conservative estimate 30 million bison were slaughtered. The logic says the same number of Indians too were starved to death. This was the biggest genocide in the entire human history.

Fascinating book. Great for anyone who has any interest in the Native Anericans, ecology, the environment, the real history of the US ( not the candy coated textbook nonsense they feed our kids in public school), and finally the human effect on wildlife in North America and beyond. Our unabashed exploitation of the bison was just the beginning of a history of complete disregard for any part of nature we don't see a profit in.

Isenburg provides a clear historical analysis of how the icon of the west became an industrial commodity. An important study of an often talked about but misunderstood episode in the history of the American West and the history of the American Environment.

Great natural history of the American bison and their connection to Plains region native tribes. Important resource.