edit: Native Americans were chilling not working and completely straight up chilling until poorly educated unenlighted complete shit white people came and ruined everything

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50082829)

So it makes sense, even though terrible and immoral

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50082839)

The Main Drivers of the Decline

Commercial Hunting: A massive market for industrial leather hides and tongues led to the "Great Slaughter" by professional hide hunters.

Military Strategy: The U.S. Army actively encouraged and participated in the destruction of the herds to force Indigenous nations onto reservations by depriving them of sustenance.

Westward Expansion: The expansion of the transcontinental railroad, cattle ranching, and farming fractured bison migration routes and consumed their grassland habitat.

Minor Contributing Factors

Bovine Diseases: Pathogens from domestic livestock like cattle and competition for forage from horses did affect some localized herds, but historians agree this was not the primary cause of the total population collapse.

Climate: Periodic droughts on the plains also strained resources, but human hunting pressure was the decisive factor.

Would you like to explore the specific historical records from the National Park Service regarding the military's role in the bison slaughter, or examine more details on the 19th-century hide trade?

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50082886)

Would you like to explore additional responses about Buffalos?!

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50082906)

https://allaboutbison.com/articles-publications/reinterpreting-the-1882-bison-population-collapse/

Bison numbers exploded when indian populations declined & then tick fever, anthrax etc. did a number on them. They were not hunted into extinction and their numbers declined in various western regions before there was a hide market or even white men present.

"for every animal killed by a hunter, five died of disease, starvation, thirst, exposure, or bogging"

Approximately 4 million bison remained in the northern herd during the 1870s.

Recorded hunting and hide shipments cannot account for their disappearance by 1883.

Texas cattle carrying tick fever entered Montana at roughly the same time and place that the northern herd collapsed.

Contemporary observers reported large numbers of unwounded carcasses.

Therefore, an epidemic killed millions, while hunters killed many of the survivors

Its literally a "white man bad" buffalo holohoax

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50082954)

"For every animal killed by a hunter, five died of disease": There is no concrete empirical evidence to support this specific ratio. While disease was present, quantifying it to say it killed five times as many bison as the commercial hide hunters is considered heavy speculation.

Hide shipments can't account for their disappearance: This ignores the massive amount of waste. Hide hunters often killed bison purely for the tongue or left hundreds of thousands of carcasses rotting on the plains because they couldn't skin them fast enough before they spoiled. Furthermore, the U.S. government and military actively encouraged the slaughter to deprive Native Americans of their primary food source, meaning many kills were never recorded as commercial "shipments."

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50082988)

Lmao the crankery here is insane.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50083006)

The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde weren’t discovered until 1888.

(https://autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895610&forum_id=2#50083018)