Hey! Some of that buffalo was killed en masse and piled high to rid the native people of their livelihoods.

One colonel, four years earlier, had told a wealthy hunter who felt a shiver of guilt after he shot 30 bulls in one trip: “Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”

By the early 20th century, the paper shows, the child-mortality rate of bison-dependent Indigenous nations was 16 percentage points higher and the probability of a working-age male reporting an occupation was 19 percentage points lower compared with Indigenous nations that were never reliant on bison.

“With my cavalry and combined artillery encamped in front, I wanted no other occupation in life than to ward off the savage and kill off his food until there should no longer be an Indian Frontier in our beautiful country” (Schofield, 1869)

So grotesque to the point they would kill the buffalo, take the hides and tongue, and leave the corpses to rot in the sun.

These poachers were often protected by the military, and received permission to lodge at military outposts.

Upwards of 50 million buffalo were living across the plains region, diminished to roughly 1000 after 20 years.