The Old West
Bison bones: From bloodlust to nourishment for a growing country's land
By JD REID
In their oceanic herds, bison meant life to the American Indian.
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Burton Historical Collection/Detroit Public Library
Pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground for fertilizer, circa 1870.
In stark contrast to the infinite hazards of the frontier and the Wild West, the animal was food, shelter, clothing. For the Plains Indians, bison were an essential single-source commodity with dozens of nonfood uses for a single carcass.
After a fruitful kill — using a "surround" technique, which is just like it sounds, or a "jump," which would drive the herd off a cliff to break their necks — the heads would be cut off and piled high to dry; there's even a spot still called "the place of many dried heads."
American Indians killed their fair share, but near-extinction was soon to come at another hand. With the railroad and westward expansion came capitalism, which swept across the West like a dust storm.
The whites' newfound taste for bison tongue made an abattoir of the plains. Since tongue was available year-round, unlike hides (heaviest and best in winter), bison were often slaughtered for the tongue alone.
Soon, profit hunts began to resemble bloodlust. John J. Audubon witnessed one white hunt for bison during which a hunter cracked open a bison skull and ate the brain raw. Bison roaming alongside trains were often the sport targets from every window of the cars, from any kind of shooting weapon.
When the price for bison hides soared, the landscape was soon littered with fuzzy-headed, skinless corpses, a wasteland of ribs and vultures.
But the number of hides sold soon began to dwindle, not for lack of demand but for lack of bison. From the mid-1870s through the mid-1880s, hundreds of commercial hide-hunting operations slaughtered an estimated 2,000 to 100,000 animals a day.
When it was over, the great herds were reduced to a few hundred head — and mountains of bones. Struggling settlers found that they could support themselves by gathering up old skeletons and selling them to fertilizer plants.
Having already preserved generations of American Indians, bison nurtured the frontier newcomer. Bison bones fed fields and orchards and gardens across the growing country, their dust giving life to our soil.
Issue: October 2009
