Earlier in this discussion we mentioned the near extinction of the buffalo. We left it with possibly the appearance of primarily placing blame upon the native people. The Smithsonian currently has a traveling exhibition, funded by the U.S. Congress, in Sierra Vista, Arizona that leaves no doubt about who is held responsible. I am posting a very bad photograph and a quote from that exhibition.
Here is the quote just above the portion pictured:
Quote:
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More than 40,000 hides fill this buffalo hide yard in Dodge City, Kansas, 1878, one of dozens of such places. Decimation of the bison herds all across the midwest led to widespread starvation among many Plains Indian tribes. -- The National Archives
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Here is another quote from an 1889 magazine:
Quote:
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Thirty years ago millions of the great unwieldy animals existed on this continent. Innumerable droves roamed, comparatively undisturbed and unmolested, . . . Many thousands have been ruthlessly and shamefully slain every season for past twenty years or more by white hunters and tourists merely for their robes, and in sheer wanton sport, and their huge carcasses left to fester and rot, and their bleached skeletons to strew the deserts and lonely plains. - "In the Prime of the Buffalo," J. F. Baltimore, The Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine, November 1889
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