Ashutosh Pathak Examination Roll No:

21036716007

Kirori Mal College ashutoshpathak32192@gmail.com

Discuss the sociological factors for the struggle between bison and Native Americans.

Andrew C. Isenberg weaves together many disparate subjects in his book. In his opinion, it is
not possible to follow a deterministic approach revolving around a single factor to explain the
near extinction of bison. Numerous factors led to the destruction of bison, not least the
natural factors like drought, blizzards and forest fires. Isenberg writes that the destruction of
the bison was “the consequence of the interactions of the human societies with a dynamic
environment”. However, this essay will focus on sociological factors that led to the en masse
killing of bison. 

The trajectory of decline of bison, and consequential precarity of nomads, spanned two
centuries - mid-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The impact of encounters with
Euroamericans was different in each century. Hence, the role of European ecological and
economic invasion in the destruction of bison. As Isenberg puts it, “The eighteenth-century
invasion had levered the mounted bison hunters to dominance in the western plains; the
renewed incursion of the nineteenth century devastated both the nomads and the bison”.

It was believed previously that nature operated in self-sustaining cycles and tended towards a
self-regulating equilibrium. This theory was challenged with the emergence of ‘chaos’
ecological perspective. It is seen that in the pre-equestrian stage of bison hunting, the
woodland Indians followed a diverse land-use strategy. This meant that they reduced the
likelihood that they would overexploit any one resource. Indians’ land use strategy protected
them from both random environmental shock and overexploitation.

The role of Euroamericans in the destruction was varied. In the eighteenth century, the acts of
negligence and omission led to destruction of bison. In the nineteenth century, the acts of
complicity and mutual involvement with natives bore heavily upon the bison. In the 18th
century, trade in beaver pelts dominated. In the 19 th century, bison were targeted for their
skins and tongues. Previously, the expansion of European biota and economy was harmful to
the bison only. Later, both nomads and bison faced a threat.
Prior to the introduction of horses, the hunter-gatherers of the Great Plains region followed
the method of pedestrian hunting. They adhered to a diversified resource base and complex
land-use strategy. They combined hunting with either sedentary horticulture or crop farming.
The environmentalists William Cronon and Richard White have called it ecological ‘safety
nets’. Excessive exploitation of resources was socially restrained by the hierarchical clan
structure marked by redistribution of goods and reciprocal giving. There was a centrality of
food procurement and apportionment among the woodland Indians.

Three factors led to the migration of woodland planter-hunters to grasslands - utility of the
horse, the lure of the fur trade and fear of Old-World microbes. The introduction of horses to
North America had begun in the late 15th century. However, the semi-sedentary Native
Americans acquired horses only in the eighteenth century. Before the arrival of the horse, the
immense bison herds of the plains served many societies as a partial source of subsistence.
Horses have been described as “the leading edge of the European biotic invasion”.

Horses were introduced by the Pueblos of New Mexico. Horses had obvious advantages.
Firstly, it was superior to dogs for traction and transport. Secondly, there was a greater ease
of equestrian over pedestrian bison hunting. Horses thus diffused into the plains from the
southwest and the northwest between 1700 and 1750, reaching the north-eastern plains by
mid-century.

Isenberg has shown that the village community had many positive features which aided
certainty of subsistence. Firstly, there was a redistribution, by the brave or the chief, of the
products of the hunt and the cornfields. Secondly, collective hunting during the summer
months of rutting seasons of bison precluded their over-exploitation. Thirdly, it provided
adequate social restraints on individual economic behaviour in dealings with, for instance, the
Euro-american fur traders. 

The above point can be illustrated with two examples. Firstly, the village-dwelling Pawnees
chose to remain in their villages and continue with the planter-hunter lifestyle. They faced the
same social pressures and provocations as those who transitioned to nomadic hunting. Hence,
they successfully resisted the exogenous pressure of the market. Secondly, Choctaws of the
lower Mississippi valley could maintain their economic tradition of redistribution, gift-giving
and alliance while participating in trade in deer skins with Euroamericans. They combined
hunting and planting. Hence, willingness of Indians to trade was as important a part as any
external factor. 

However, a village setting with its intimate social interaction and communal endeavours had
its own pitfalls. Firstly, the epidemics caused by Old World microbes could take a heavy toll
in villages where population density was high. Secondly, Missouri river villages were
frequently raided by the nomads. The horses made possible the quick raids and made the
village inhabitants defenceless. Thirdly, while methods of collective hunting were laborious
and expensive, the nomads acquired advanced technology. These included tepees, travois and
the short bow. The point on villages as important conduits of epidemics is explained below.

A devastating epidemic of smallpox struck the plains between 1780 and 1782. The first wave
of the disease killed thirty-one people in Albuquerque in the spring of 1780. The mortality
among the villagers greatly exceeded that of the nomads. Equestrian bison hunting saved the
nomads from greater mortality. The differences in population density had an impact on the
incidence of epidemics. For example, the population density of Mandan and Hidatsas
villagers was over twenty-seven people per square kilometre. In contrast, the population per
square kilometre of Comanches, Cheyenne’s, Arapahos and Kiowas ranged between five and
fewer than two.  

Shortgrasses in the semi-arid plains were thick enough to support large aggregations of bison
in summer only. Bison congregate during their rut season in summers to graze the
shortgrasses. The woodland Indians had made a transition from hunting-gathering or semi-
sedentary lifestyle to nomadism. Nomadism implied being constantly on the move to hunt the
bison. The nomads had to hunt bison whether they were in aggregation or dispersed.
Therefore, they too adopted more flexible social structures thereby not only abandoning their
ecological safety nets but social safety nets of subsistence. Their social structures became
increasingly decentralised.

Trade with Europeans too contributed to the downward trend in bison population. It is
important to understand the changing agents and articles of exchange. A brief summary
follows. The initial item of trade was the horse bought and sold through inter-tribal trading
and raiding. With the social segmentation between Missouri river villagers and western plains
nomads, the items of exchange diversified. Nomads traded off the products of the hunt (hides,
robes, dried meat) with farm produce of the villages (corn, beans, squash). 
European fur traders willing to trade in beaver pelts grafted their commerce onto the existing
intertribal trade network. The receptivity of nomads to trade facilitated this transformation. In
the early 1830s, the market in beaver belts collapsed for numerous reasons. The absence of
social check on economic behaviour meant that the nomadic groups made irrational economic
decisions for earning quick profits. 

Firstly, the competing fur companies glutted the market with pelts. This was because the
competing fur companies flooded the market with pelts. Dealers in pelts indulged in hoarding
and economic opportunism. Secondly, steady extermination of beaver pointed to the dangers
of specialisation as hunters. Thirdly, the beaver was not important to nomads’ subsistence.
Therefore, bison robe trade became a distinct phenomenon of the nineteenth century which
led to near extinction of bison. 

The Brulés (Sioux) first encountered European manufactured articles in 1707. These included
a kettle and guns. This presaged a flood of manufactured goods into the plains in the
eighteenth century. Emerging trade networks with Europeans encouraged the nomads to
specialise as hunters. The trade expanded to include rare and prestigious European
manufactured goods – guns, knives, woven cloth and alcohol. 

For e.g., Edwin Thompson Denig and George Catlin gave an account of a notorious bison
hunt in the early 1830s near Fort Pierre. The bison were hunted by the Yanctonnai Sioux who
killed fifteen hundred bison. A probe into the egregious killing of bison revealed that
incentives of trade might have contributed to it. By the 1830s, alcohol was the dominant
commodity in the bison robe trade for a number of reasons. Firstly, unlike other merchandise,
alcohol did not impede the hunters’ mobility once consumed. Secondly, the demand for
alcohol was quite high as compared to knives or rifles. The incentives of trade may have
spurred the hunters to greater destruction. Therefore, nomadic tribes gladly exchanged
tongues and skins for “trinkets and whiskey”.

The fur companies too wanted to undercut their competitors. They supplied alcohol and credit
to Indians to induce them to hunt extensively. For instance, the American Fur Company was
determined to control the marketing of bison robes in the East. The nomads were largely
receptive to trade. Trade acted as an additional social safety net which supplemented the
year-round and precarious reliance on bison only. 
Beginning of trade contributed to increasing consumerism among nomadic tribes.
Consumerism moved from the margins to the centre of the nomadic societies. Bison meat
was consumed and it was valued as a principal source of food. In fact, the nomads knew how
to utilise every part of bison - flesh for food, horns/ bones for tools/implements, hooves for
glue, sinew for thread. However, as trade in bison robe picked up from the 1830s down till
1870s, nomads only sought their marketable parts i.e., the skin and the tongue.1

The conditions which supported the existence of the bison population too were threatened
because of trade. Between 1810s and 1830s, three factors combined to intrude into bison’s
habitat - the coming of the steamboat to the upper Missouri River, the pressure of the market
revolution, and the revocation of federal laws. The steam technology required to ascend
Missouri in search of labour and resources operated to the detriment of forests - the bison’s
winter habitat. Secondly, the short-grasses were trampled by herds of California-bound
Euroamericans. 

An important factor was the transformation in gender relations. With the change in
subsistence base and technological advancement, the gender roles too changed. The
emergence of gendered division of labour in the nomadic societies can be traced to the
eighteenth century. Women and girls were relegated to dressing of meats and hides while
hunting became the domain of men and older boys. The decline of women’s status and the
ascendancy of the bison robe trade were therefore mutually reinforcing processes.

Men began to rely on the labour of socially subordinate women who dressed robes for trade.
In Isenberg’s words, “men became “procurers” of resources (horse and bison) and women
became the “processors” of those resources”. By the 1830s and 1840s, female labourers were
raided as slave to redress the shortage of labour for dressing bison robes. Female children
were trafficked or were married at young ages. The greater the destruction of bison, the lesser
the age of marriage or enslavement. 

Polygyny or the practice of having multiple wives preceded the trade in bison robes.
However, in the mid-nineteenth century, polygynous union meant greater number of robes for
the market. The process of wealth generation through this strategy was the preserve of a few
successful commercial hunters. Wealthiest hunters had eight or nine wives. Multiple wives

1
This consumerism and wastefulness was yet another instance of absence of social restraints of
economic behaviour.
also became a symbol of status and prestige. The greater the number of wives, the more a
man was affluent and envied. 

The volatility in natural and geographical conditions too prevented the growth of bison
population. Firstly, the semi-arid climate of the dynamic grassland environment and region’s
susceptibility to drought played a role. Secondly, beginning 1840s, the rainfall was below
average which reduced the carrying capacity of the grasslands. Effective precipitation
determines a region’s vegetation. Less rainfall, therefore, had an adverse impact on
shortgrasses as well. 

These ‘natural’ conditions were not autonomous agents. Their adverse impact was
accentuated by human-induced factors. For instance, the emigration of California-bound
Euroamericans in the 1840s disrupted the ecological niche of bison herds. Their livestock
trampled or consumed the grasses along Platte River, thus ruining bison’s forage for miles on
either side of Santa Fe trail. The widespread despoliation of forage and timber contributed to
the diminution of bison herds. In 1853 alone, emigrants herded over one hundred thousand
cattle and forty-eight thousand sheep along the Platte.

Horses and cattle herds gave competition to the bison for forage. Horses, which have an 80
percent dietary overlap with bison, competed with the herds for forage. Bison faced
competition from other grazers in the past also. There was a second factor this time – the
spread of bovine diseases among the bison. Anthrax was the likely killer of large numbers of
bison in the Canadian plains in the 1820s and 1830s. 

To conclude, Isenberg’s point is that the numerous threats faced by the bison population were
not novel. However, the scale and the sheer synergy which marked their manifestation in the
mid-eighteenth and nineteenth century nearly wiped them out. These challenges included loss
of forage (short-grasses), thinning of the herd by fire, extended periods of drought, severe
winters, bovine diseases like anthrax and predation by the wolves. 

Secondly, Isenberg is a proponent of understanding the interrelatedness of historical

phenomena. He writes, “It is tempting to categorise separately anthropogenic and
environmental causes of bison mortality. To do so, however, would obscure the inseparability
of the human and ecological causes of the destruction of the bison.” Therefore, all the
transformations - social, economic and environmental - that contributed to the demise of the
bison were embedded in each other.
References

Isenberg, A. C. (2001). In A. C. Isenberg , The Destruction of the Bison (pp. 1-62, 93-123).
New York: Cambridge University Press.