INTRODUCTION
By Marian Albright Schenk
FOREWORD
By Dean Knudsen
SECTION 1
Primary Themes of Jackson's Art
SECTION 2
Paintings of the Oregon Trail
SECTION 3
Historic Scenes From the West
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| William Henry Jackson may have been aware of the contributions that buffalo hunters made to the conquest of the West, but later in life he took an active role in preserving buffalo, and in 1937 was elected to the Board of Managers of the American Bison Society. (SCBL 2006) |
Section 3: Historic Scenes from the West
HIDE HUNTERS
For people on the frontier during the first half of the 19th Century, it must have seemed as if the herds of buffalo were inexhaustible. Several witnesses described herds so large that they extended to the far horizon, and when the animals were on the move, the earth trembled.
Who could have foreseen that the American bison, which have been estimated to have once numbered 30,000,0001 would be nearly extinct in a period of only twenty-five years. Several factors contributed to the near eradication of the buffalo. Significant among these were the railroads. Men such as William F. Cody, made a name for themselves when they were hired to bring in buffalo meat to feed the railroad's construction workers.
With the completion of the railroads, the iron rails effectively divided the buffalo, which had once ranged from Texas to Canada, into smaller northern and southern herds. Railroad passengers often amused themselves by shooting buffalo for sport from the comfort of their Pullman car. The railroad also made it economically profitable for buffalo hides to be shipped to the East where they were made into winter coats and lap robes, or tanned and cut into the belts that powered factories in the United States and Europe.
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| Jackson generally did a good job of identifying his subjects, however all that is known about this man is the cryptic notation, "Hunter for the Survey, Yellowstone." (SCBL 1003) |
With this ready marker, thousands of hunters took to the Plains with high-powered rifles and an eye for making some quick money. In a very short time the West was littered with the stinking carcasses of buffalo that had been shot for their hides. Soon other hunters found that they didn't need to work that hard and were killing buffalo simply for their tongues, which were considered to be a delicacy.
As the Indian Wars dragged on between 1864 and 1877, the US Army came to realize that if the buffalo were removed, the Plains Indians who relied on the buffalo, would become dependent on government rations and thereby be forced onto reservations. To this end, soldiers and civilians alike were encouraged to shoot buffalo on sight, simply to deny them to Indian hunters.
All these factors contributed to the rapid decline in the numbers of buffalo, until the animal which had once been so common in the West became a rarity. In 1889, William Hornaday, a taxidermist for the U.S. National Museum, in search of an exhibit specimen, was startled to learn that only one thousand buffalo still remained in the United States, and most of these were kept on private ranches and reserves.2
In 1905 a concerted effort to preserve the endangered animals was made by the American Bison Society. Over a period of twenty-five years this group published a number of articles that alerted the general public to the threat of the buffalo's extinction, and funds were raised for the purchase of lands and stock to ensure the buffalo's survival. These efforts were so successful that by 1930 there was an estimated buffalo population of 20,000.3
1. Tom McHugh, The Time of the Buffalo (New York City: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), 291.
2. Ibid.
3. Martin S. Garretson, The American Bison, (New York City: New York Zoological Society, 1938), 212-213.
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| White Men Hunting Buffalo. Initialed and dated 1936. 25.4 x 35.0 cm. (SCBL 158) |
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scbl/knudsen/sec3d.htm Last Updated: 14-Apr-2006 |
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