Challenging Boundaries:

A historical perspective on the forces that led to genocide against indigenous

Americans, killed the great buffalo herds, and bring us to Bozeman here today

by Jim MacdonaldBuffalo Allies of Bozeman

October 18, 2008

A challenging question:

What reason did we ever have to stop thebuffalo herds from roaming?

?

Another one:

Do we have any reason now today to stopthe buffalo herds from roaming?

?

One more:

What about the people who once roamedwith the buffalo?

?

And finally:

What about us whoever and whereverwe may be?

?

In this presentation, we are going to look backward to see how the decline of the buffalo and the decline of native peoples in the United States were not an accident.

KEEPING THOSE QUESTIONS IN MIND …

The same forces that destroyed native populations destroyed buffalo populations for the very same reasons.

Ironically, those same reasons are alive today, bringing us together in Bozeman to talk about the buffalo still being persecuted in Greater Yellowstone.

A LOOK AT THE NUMBERS

Before Columbus “discovered” America in 1492, between 2-18 million American Indians lived north of Mexico, depending on whose numbers you believe.

By 1900, the number fell to 237,000 in the United States. Even by the most conservative pre-Colombian population estimates, that’s an 80% decline (or by the most accepted estimates today, a 95-98% decline). By comparison, the Nazi Holocaust of Jews and Roma was 66% albeit over only a 12 year period.

In 1800, the most current estimates show between 30-40 million buffalo (bison) on the Great Plains. By 1902, there were approximately 750 left in the entire United States.

In the wild, that number was reduced to 23, all inside of Yellowstone National Park.

So, whatcaused this?

AN UGLY HISTORY

I am going to try and convince you in this presentation that the reason for the decline of America’s indigenous population was genocide.

The mass decline of buffalo populations has been a chapter in that genocide.

My assertion is controversial, and so we need to stop and consider it.

WHAT IS GENOCIDE?

• The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944 and literally means the killing of a race, family, and/or tribe.

• While there is a lot of debate over the meaning of the word “genocide,” it does not literally mean the killing of a particular “gene” pool; that is, genocide is not necessarily racially motivated. Also, as the following definitions make clear, genocide does not need to result in the annihilation of that group. Furthermore, an act may be called genocide even when the act itself falls short of direct murder.

ACCEPTED DEFINITIONS OF GENOCIDE

• Raphael Lemkin’s definition: “Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed at the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed at individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.”

• United Nations definition: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

WHAT CAUSED INDIGENOUS POPULATIONDECLINE?

• Disease Especially smallpox. On the Great Plains, for instance, populations

declined from 112,300 to 47,345 between 1780 and 1877, a reduction of 58%, with some farming tribes heavily affected by smallpox having population declines as much as 93%.

• Displacement Almost every native tribe was displaced in some way. The most famous,

of course, is the Cherokee “Trail of Tears,” but most tribes were moved into reservations, causing great upheaval for many people.

• Warfare A relatively small number killed in “Indian Wars;” however, scholars have

pointed out that this fact is often true of genocides.

• Assimilation Many Native peoples were forced to assimilate with the dominant “white”

(a word sometimes used in treaties) culture. Children were forcibly removed from tribes and reservations and educated at schools like Carlisle.

• Much lower life expectancy The life expectancy of an American Indian living on a reservation in the

United States is 47 years (that’s this decade). What was it in the 19th century when faced with relentless disease, war, assimilation, and starvation?

WHY DO THESE CAUSES CONTRIBUTE TOGENOCIDE?

A counter-argument: Since most indigenous people died from disease, this accidental cause is the strongest evidence that what happened to native peoples, however horrible, was not genocide.

Rebuttal: The effects of smallpox and other diseases were well known since the 16th century. Besides documented cases of Euroamericans intentionally spreading smallpox through the use of “smallpox blankets,” the sheer fact that settlers and authorities refused to take precautions against spreading the disease, not to mention the refusal to occupy indigenous land in the first place, is strong evidence that the diseases are evidence for rather than against genocide. In fact, there are many cases where settlers appeared in ghost towns where every resident had died off. What did those settlers do? Celebrate a gift from God.

More reasons we will consider in upcoming slides:

1. Warfare, displacement, and assimilation were promoted as national policy by American leaders.

2. Euroamericans justified the displacement of indigenous peoples based on John Locke’s theory of property rights, which belittled indigenous claims to the land.

3. The destruction of the buffalo is a perfect example of genocide, where points 1 and 2 are played out. Buffalo destruction was national policy; it was justified by applying Locke’s theories to indigenous people and therefore buffalo on the Great Plains.

AMERICAN LEADERS ON THE AMERICANINDIAN

George Washington: “For I repeat it, again, and I am clear in my opinion, that policy and economy point very strongly to the expediency of being upon good terms with the Indians, and the proprietary of purchasing their Lands in preference to attempting to drive them by force of arms out of their Country; which as we have already experienced is like driving the Wild Beasts of the Forest which will return as soon as the pursuit is at an end and fall perhaps on those that left there; when the gradual extension of our Settlements will as certainly cause the Savage as the Wolf to retire; both being beasts of prey tho’ they differ in shape. In a word there is nothing to be obtained by an Indian War but the Soil they live on and this can be had by purchase at less expense, and without that bloodshed, and those distresses which helpless Women and Children are made partakers of in all kinds of disputes with them.”

Thomas Jefferson: “… if ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe we will never lay it down til that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi … in war they will kill some of us; But we will destroy all of them. Adjuring them, therefore, if they wish to remain on the land which covers the bones of their fathers, to keep the peace with a people who ask their friendship without needing it, who wish to avoid war without fearing it. In war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.”

Abraham Lincoln: “I can only say that I can see no way in which your race is to become numerous and prosperous as the white race except by living as they do, by the cultivation of the earth.”

Theodore Roosevelt: “I suppose I should be ashamed to say that I take the Western view of the Indian. I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

Where have we seen those four guys before?

EXAMPLES OF GENOCIDE IN ACTION – SAND CREEK MASSACRE

• On November 29, 1864, U.S. troops under Col. John M. Chivington massacred at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho who believed they were under the protection of the Army. This massacre was in large part perpetrated because of an exterminationist frenzy whipped up by the territorial governor of Colorado and The Rocky Mountain News.

• “They are a dissolute, vagabondish, brutal, and ungrateful race and ought to be wiped from the face of the earth.” – Rocky Mountain News, March 24, 1863.

• “My intention is to kill all Indians I may come across” – Col. John M. Chivington, commanding officer of the massacre.

• “Nits make lice” – Col. Chivington (also said at other times by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and Gen. John Sevier, both Indian fighters.)

• “Of from five to six hundred souls [who were killed], the majority of which were women and children … I did not see a body of a man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies were mutilated in a most horrible manner – men, women and children’s private’s cut out, &c; I heard one man say that he had cut out a woman’s private parts and had them for exhibition on a stick; I heard another man say he had cut off the fingers of an Indian to get the rings on the hand … I also heard numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle bows and wore them over hats while riding in the ranks … I heard one man say that he had cut a squaw’s heart out, and he had it stuck up on a stick.” – a lieutenant in the New Mexico Volunteers

• Sand Creek is only one of many examples of genocidal behavior and atrocities committed by the United States, or by the colonies before independence. Most colonies, for instance, had scalp bounties on any head of an enemy Indian. Since it was impossible to tell a friendly Indian from an enemy, many Indians were killed for the bounty on their scalps.

EXAMPLES OF GENOCIDE IN ACTION – WOUNDED KNEE

• On December 29, 1890, U.S. troops under Gen. Nelson Miles butchered hundreds of Lakota Indians. They were persecuted for practicing the “Ghost Dance,” which taught that Indians’ dead ancestors would return and that white people would disappear.

• “Many Americans wanted more Indians to die. One citizen wrote the Secretary of War to propose ‘establishing an electric plant at Pine Ridge and stretching a wire around the hostile camp. Then, turning on the current, the Indians are to be driven down to the wire, which is to be drawn closer and closer. Contact … would cause general death.’ Retired General William Tecumseh Sherman … wrote his niece [Gen.] Miles’s wife Mary, that the more Sioux her husband ‘kills now, the less he will have to do later.’” – author Jeffrey Ostler in The Plains Sioux and U.S. Colonialism from Lewis and Clark to Wounded Knee.

Mass burial of Lakota at Wounded Knee

GENOCIDE AND JOHN LOCKE’S THEORIESON PROPERTY RIGHTS

In 1690, English philosopher John Locke wrote his celebrated work, The Second Treatise of Civil Government, a book that heavily influenced the Founding Fathers and can be seen over and over again in the justification Euroamericans used in killing and

displacing indigenous people. Locke’s theoryof property rights is almost taken as gospelamong Americans, especially Westerners.

So, how did the theory of property rightslead to genocide?

BRIEFLY, ON LOCKE AND PROPERTY

Locke claims that any person has a property right over any land or thing when he mixes it with his labor. So, an acre of land is mine when I grow a crop on it or build a house. If I don’t use it or cannot use it, I lose my right to it.

Inherent in Locke’s claim is that the objects in the world belong to humans; they belong to a particular human when that person “improves” upon the object in some way.

He goes on to say that those who make better use of their property have more right to it than someone who doesn’t. John Locke has America specifically in mind:

An acre of land, that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and another in America, which, with the same husbandry, would do the like, are, without doubt, of the same natural intrinsic value: but yet the benefit mankind receives from the one in a year, is worth 5l. and from the other possibly not worth a penny, if all the profit an Indian received from it were to be valued, and sold here; at least, I may truly say, not one thousandth. It is labour then which puts the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely be worth any thing.

Locke’s views on America is so important in stating his views on the state of nature andthe right to property that Locke soon after says “Thus in the beginning all the world was America ….”

The bottom line is this: Euroamericans determined that Native Americans, especially those who weren’t farming and trading, could forfeit their supposed property rights to those – i.e., white people – who would use it for greater benefit. Genocide, especially assimilation, was justified as the proper application of the theory of property rights.

BRINGING US TO THE DESTRUCTION OFTHE BUFFALO HERDS

• Locke’s theories on property rights obviously applied as well to the nomadic Plains tribes, who sustained themselves by following the buffalo herds. According to Locke’s theories, these tribes did not deserve the lands they were “wasting” or the wild buffalo herds, who were not as useful as land and animals (like cattle or sheep) that had been maximized for the benefit of humanity.

• Prior to the mid 18th century, buffalo hunting had mostly been dominated by agriculturalists, who went on buffalo hunts seasonally. These hunts happened on foot.

• Nomadic tribes, such as the Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, Arapaho, Comanche, Blackfeet, Kiowa, and others began dominating the Great Plains in the late 18th century after disease began decimating the agriculturalists and after the horse trade began in earnest.

• Capitalist trade became an increasing reality in the life of indigenous tribes on the Great Plains. First, it was the trade in beaver fur and horses. While the nomads at first were resistant to trade due to their way of life, factors changed over time that led to greater stress on the buffalo population and greater reliance by nomads upon the buffalo.

• Buffalo hunting in the early 19th century by nomadic tribes may have been sustainable, but when the buffalo fur trade exploded in the middle decades of the century, buffalo populations may have begun decreasing.

• So, genocide on the coasts destroyed the interior agriculturalists. That and trade practices influenced by Europe at first led to the rise of the nomadic tribes on the Plains but then began to destroy the great buffalo herds.

But, all of that did nothing to destroy buffalo numbers like what happened next.

The vast majority of buffalo in the United States were killed in 1860s and 70s. It was official U.S. policy!

MASS SLAUGHTER

After the Civil War, mass slaughter of the buffalo herds was official policy of the U.S. government, especially the army, under the direction of Gen. William T. Sherman and Gen. Phil Sheridan. In the 1870s, that policy was supported by the Grant Administration, often in the person of Sec. of Interior John Delano. Where some state legislatures and some in Congress offered up bills attempting at least some protection for the buffalo, the aforementioned forces teamed up to stop them. Look for instance at how James Garfield, then Speaker of the House, defended the view that however cruel, the buffalo slaughter was at least driving Native Americans into the reservation:

If barbarism of killing buffalo for mere wanton sport has any compensation in it, perhaps it may be this is a compensation worthy of our consideration.”

Delano wrote:[W]henever it is found that any tribe or band of Indians persistently refuse to go upon a reservation and determine to continue their nomadic habits … then the policy

contemplates the treatment of such tribe or band with all needed severity … The rapid disappearance of game from the former hunting-grounds must operate largely in favor of our efforts to confine the Indians to smaller areas, and compel them to abandon their nomadic customs.

Here is Sheridan before the Texas legislature in 1875 speaking against a bill to protect the buffalo:

[The buffalo hunters] have done in the last two years and will do more in the next year to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last 30 years. They are destroying the Indian’s commissary, and it is a well-known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; for the sake of a lasting peace, let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated.

MORE NOTES ON THE MASS BUFFALO SLAUGHTER

• The military usually contracted out to private citizens, or more accurately in most cases simply allowed and encouraged private citizens, to destroy massive herds of buffalo, made easier by improvements in rifle technology. This was often in direct violation of previous Indian treaties (more on an egregious example that applies to us soon).

• Between 1872-1874 in the Dodge City, Kansas, area alone, Frank Mayer reported that 3,158,730 buffalo had been killed (not including 1,215,000 estimated to have been killed by Native Americans).

• The gold rush of the 1840s had been replaced by a buffalo hide rush in the 1870s, especially as demand for buffalo leather from tanneries in the United States and United Kingdom exploded.

• By the early 1880s, the buffalo slaughter was complete (though numbers would continue to decrease for decades). All that was left was to pick the bones, literally. The Great Plains was littered with buffalo bones. In many cases, the bones were shipped to fertilizer plants in Michigan.

• By the late 1870s, the nomadic tribes had given up, not defeated militarily so much as defeated economically. Crazy Horse gave up, and Sitting Bull fled to Canada for a time. Before 1880, Crazy Horse was dead, and just before the Wounded Knee Massacre, Sitting Bull had been killed as well.

• By the 1880s, some of the Euroamerican buffalo hunters openly called for saving the remaining buffalo, nostalgic for the era which had just past. The organization that “saved the buffalo,” mostly by domesticating the species, called the “American Bison Society,” was dominated by wealthy Eastern males, among them Theodore Roosevelt.

That almost takes us to Yellowstone, butbefore we consider the next presentation on buffalo in Yellowstone, let’s drive this point HOME!

THE BOZEMAN TRAIL

• Bozeman was founded by a man named John Bozeman and friends in the early 1860s by going over a route that became known as the Bozeman Trail.

THE BOZEMAN TRAIL & GENOCIDE

• John Bozeman and his buddies founded the trail as an easier route to the gold mines at Alder Gulch near Virginia City, now in Montana and the town to sell supplies to miners.

• However, the Bozeman Trail was illegal. It violated the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Or, perhaps, it was just an extension of Locke’s theory that a road to a mine was a better use of land.

• This led to Red Cloud’s War in 1868 – a defeat for the United States – and the closing of the Bozeman Trail; it set the ground for Little Bighorn and the Indian Wars of the 1870s.

BUT BOZEMAN REMAINED

• Bozeman the town obviously never went away. Fort Ellis was built for protection against native tribes.

• The town survived the end of mining because entrepreneurs in town like Nelson Story sold goods to the government and reservations.

• When it worked to their advantage, the wealthier townspeople hired mercenaries with the aim of starting an Indian war.

• Yellowstone was “discovered” by early 1870s expeditions. Bozeman was an important staging area for these explorations.

AND HERE WE ARE …

• The largest herd of wild buffalo remains confined within the proprietary limits of Yellowstone National Park, near us here.

• Those buffalo are slaughtered or tortured whenever they leave the park in part to protect the property rights of livestock owners.

• Shoshone Tukadika, (Sheep Eaters), native inhabitants of Yellowstone were forced out.

• The buffalo in the area are managed jointly by Montana and the federal government under the Interagency Bison Management Plan.

• Bozeman is a growing urban center that arose during the chapters of genocide, and here we still are.

BACK TO OUR QUESTIONS …

What reason did we ever have to stop the buffalo herds from roaming?

Do we have any reason now today to stopthe buffalo herds from roaming?

What about the people who once roamedwith the buffalo?

What about us whoever and wherever we may be? (in Bozeman)

I have two more:

Can we solve the present problem with buffalo in Yellowstone without coming to terms with our past and the relationship between the genocide of indigenous people and those same buffalo?

Can we solve those problems without challenging the views on property rights that have brought us here?

Thank you!

To help here in Bozeman, please consider joining Buffalo Allies of Bozeman: http://www.buffaloallies.org