1 00:00:01,400 --> 00:00:04,600 Speaker 1: For more than one hundred centuries, Native people in Bison 2 00:00:04,720 --> 00:00:09,600 Speaker 1: had been enjoined in an evolutionary economic and religious relationship 3 00:00:09,640 --> 00:00:13,440 Speaker 1: in the West, only to witness something that appeared timeless 4 00:00:13,520 --> 00:00:18,759 Speaker 1: collapsed completely by the eighteen eighties. I'm Dan Florries, and 5 00:00:18,840 --> 00:00:22,840 Speaker 1: this is the American West, brought to you by Velvet 6 00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:26,560 Speaker 1: Buck Wine, where the hunt meets the harvest. A portion 7 00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:30,280 Speaker 1: of each battle goes to support backcountry hunters and anglers. 8 00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:35,440 Speaker 1: Limited supply available at Velvetbuck Vineyards dot com. 9 00:00:35,680 --> 00:00:37,240 Speaker 2: Enjoy responsible. 10 00:00:52,880 --> 00:01:00,760 Speaker 1: A Dream of Bison, Part one. The fall of eighteen 11 00:01:00,800 --> 00:01:05,320 Speaker 1: eighty six, Willmt. Hornaday, taxidermist at the National Museum in Washington, 12 00:01:05,760 --> 00:01:09,240 Speaker 1: stepped off a train in Miles City, Montana, on a 13 00:01:09,280 --> 00:01:14,479 Speaker 1: truly historic mission. The American bison, an animal whose charisma 14 00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:18,240 Speaker 1: and staggering abundance had for three centuries stood as shorthand 15 00:01:18,400 --> 00:01:21,480 Speaker 1: for North America to the world, somehow, was on the 16 00:01:21,520 --> 00:01:25,759 Speaker 1: brink of extinction, except in remote parts of Texas, Montana, 17 00:01:25,840 --> 00:01:28,880 Speaker 1: and Alberta, where rumors held there might be two or 18 00:01:28,880 --> 00:01:33,240 Speaker 1: three tiny herds of wildly spooky survivors. A creature whose 19 00:01:33,319 --> 00:01:38,199 Speaker 1: range had once extended from northwestern Canada to Florida, whose 20 00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:41,520 Speaker 1: herds sometimes took the better part of a week for 21 00:01:41,720 --> 00:01:45,959 Speaker 1: mounted horsemen to pass, was tottering on the precipice of 22 00:01:46,120 --> 00:01:51,600 Speaker 1: total disappearance. The bison hunt in America was an ancient economy, 23 00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:56,640 Speaker 1: going back multiple thousands of years. Now, Native people like 24 00:01:56,760 --> 00:02:00,680 Speaker 1: the Blackfeet, who had often taken twenty thousand by a year, 25 00:02:01,040 --> 00:02:06,800 Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty three had killed all of six. This 26 00:02:06,960 --> 00:02:11,640 Speaker 1: was why Hornaday was in Montana. Stunningly, bison were on 27 00:02:11,720 --> 00:02:14,640 Speaker 1: the verge of becoming little more than a memory, and 28 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:19,040 Speaker 1: the National Museum at least wanted a representative collection that 29 00:02:19,240 --> 00:02:22,880 Speaker 1: might become a museum exhibit, since that was all future 30 00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:28,320 Speaker 1: citizens might ever see of America's most iconic creature. The 31 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:33,240 Speaker 1: Horneday Party's goal was to obtain twenty to thirty specimens, 32 00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:37,919 Speaker 1: which the scientists understood might represent as many as half 33 00:02:38,160 --> 00:02:41,800 Speaker 1: of the wild bison left in the United States. He 34 00:02:41,880 --> 00:02:45,840 Speaker 1: had narrowed his search to west central Montana, between the 35 00:02:45,919 --> 00:02:49,960 Speaker 1: Yellowstone and the Missouri, using the lu Bar Ranch as 36 00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:53,840 Speaker 1: headquarters to hunt a rumored herd of thirty five in 37 00:02:53,919 --> 00:02:58,280 Speaker 1: the area. The US Army provided support, and two soldiers 38 00:02:58,320 --> 00:03:01,880 Speaker 1: and two cowboys from the ranch accompanied Hornaday and his 39 00:03:02,120 --> 00:03:07,720 Speaker 1: assistant Harvey Brown, on Calf Creek, a southern tributary of 40 00:03:07,760 --> 00:03:12,680 Speaker 1: the Musselshell. In October, this party began to find buffalo. 41 00:03:14,080 --> 00:03:18,239 Speaker 1: The stories about the survivor animals were true, though these 42 00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:23,760 Speaker 1: buffalo were extraordinarily wild and perceiving themselves. Pursued fled nearly 43 00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:29,280 Speaker 1: fifteen miles across the badlands of Montana Territory. Nonetheless, as 44 00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:34,200 Speaker 1: dusk was falling on October sixteenth, two of Hornaday's hunters 45 00:03:34,240 --> 00:03:35,600 Speaker 1: managed to down. 46 00:03:35,440 --> 00:03:37,360 Speaker 2: A huge bull. 47 00:03:37,480 --> 00:03:40,360 Speaker 1: Because of the lateness of the hour, the party left 48 00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:43,360 Speaker 1: their prize where it fell, with a plan to return 49 00:03:43,680 --> 00:03:48,720 Speaker 1: the following day. Here is how Harvey Brown described the 50 00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:53,600 Speaker 1: scene when they arrived the next morning, Sunday, October seventeenth, 51 00:03:53,960 --> 00:03:58,000 Speaker 1: to our great dismay, the noble red men had visited 52 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:01,440 Speaker 1: the bull which Boyd and mcnahi had killed the day before. 53 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:06,920 Speaker 1: Astonishment evolved into a general confusion and then anger about 54 00:04:06,920 --> 00:04:08,760 Speaker 1: what had taken place during the night. 55 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:10,360 Speaker 2: All that remained of. 56 00:04:10,320 --> 00:04:14,120 Speaker 1: The bull, he wrote, was the head painted red on 57 00:04:14,120 --> 00:04:17,719 Speaker 1: one side, yellow on the other, with a red and 58 00:04:17,839 --> 00:04:22,200 Speaker 1: yellow rag tied to one horn, and eleven notches cut 59 00:04:22,320 --> 00:04:23,119 Speaker 1: in the other horn. 60 00:04:23,680 --> 00:04:25,200 Speaker 2: All around were. 61 00:04:25,080 --> 00:04:30,280 Speaker 1: Moccasin tracks, Hornaday's party went on to take twenty two 62 00:04:30,480 --> 00:04:34,719 Speaker 1: buffalo out of this last remnant of animals, a tiny 63 00:04:34,760 --> 00:04:37,919 Speaker 1: puddle that was almost all that was left of a 64 00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:43,560 Speaker 1: once vast, now evaporated ocean of animals. As director of 65 00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:46,800 Speaker 1: the New York Zoological Park and a founding member of 66 00:04:46,839 --> 00:04:50,640 Speaker 1: the American Bison Society, Hornaday would spend much of the 67 00:04:50,680 --> 00:04:53,479 Speaker 1: next four decades of his life trying to save the 68 00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:58,080 Speaker 1: bison from complete extinction. That fall of eighteen eighty six, 69 00:04:58,240 --> 00:05:02,240 Speaker 1: he believed that not more than thirty animals remained alive 70 00:05:02,320 --> 00:05:06,279 Speaker 1: in Montana, where the last great bison hunts had taken place. 71 00:05:06,880 --> 00:05:10,279 Speaker 1: He would eventually conclude that at the time of this hunt, 72 00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:15,599 Speaker 1: only one thousand and seventy three wild bison were still 73 00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:21,320 Speaker 1: drawing breath in North America. No one ever identified just 74 00:05:21,440 --> 00:05:25,679 Speaker 1: who those native hunters were who had located Hornaday's downed bull, 75 00:05:26,080 --> 00:05:29,719 Speaker 1: or exactly what ceremony they had performed around it during 76 00:05:29,760 --> 00:05:34,560 Speaker 1: the night of October sixteen, seventeen, eighteen eighty six. But 77 00:05:34,680 --> 00:05:38,720 Speaker 1: from the evidence they left, they too understood that something 78 00:05:38,839 --> 00:05:43,840 Speaker 1: truly profound was happening. A bison bull whose head was 79 00:05:43,920 --> 00:05:47,120 Speaker 1: marked and decorated and painted red and yellow in the 80 00:05:47,240 --> 00:05:51,719 Speaker 1: night may have signaled an ending of something large, something 81 00:05:51,760 --> 00:05:55,640 Speaker 1: that defined the world. The end of bison was a 82 00:05:55,760 --> 00:05:59,440 Speaker 1: historical change so traumatic that, as the crow leader plenty 83 00:05:59,440 --> 00:06:06,040 Speaker 1: Coup would put it, after that nothing happened. We now 84 00:06:06,080 --> 00:06:09,280 Speaker 1: know that one of the long term consequences of the 85 00:06:09,320 --> 00:06:13,800 Speaker 1: Pleistocene extinctions ten thousand years ago were a handful of 86 00:06:13,920 --> 00:06:18,839 Speaker 1: animal survivors that benefited from the loss of competition. In 87 00:06:18,880 --> 00:06:23,640 Speaker 1: the American West, the primary benefactor was the new, smaller bison, 88 00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:29,760 Speaker 1: which underwent a massive population explosion when other grass eaters disappeared, 89 00:06:30,839 --> 00:06:35,680 Speaker 1: half the size of their Pleistocene ancestors, reaching reproductive maturity 90 00:06:35,800 --> 00:06:40,000 Speaker 1: far faster. Buffalo adapted perfectly to the grasslands of the 91 00:06:40,040 --> 00:06:44,840 Speaker 1: interior of the continent. Their population was no doubt highly variable, 92 00:06:44,960 --> 00:06:48,400 Speaker 1: but based on the number of livestock that replaced them, 93 00:06:48,600 --> 00:06:53,040 Speaker 1: their numbers in their core range likely ranged between about 94 00:06:53,200 --> 00:06:58,120 Speaker 1: twenty and thirty million. Great climate swings like the Alta 95 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:02,760 Speaker 1: thermal redistributed them and shrank or grew their numbers, but 96 00:07:03,000 --> 00:07:07,720 Speaker 1: never pushed them towards extinction. Buffalo grew so numerous and 97 00:07:07,760 --> 00:07:11,720 Speaker 1: were such a perfect fit to plastisine conditions that no 98 00:07:11,880 --> 00:07:16,080 Speaker 1: amount of predation, either from gray wolves or humans, seemed 99 00:07:16,120 --> 00:07:20,160 Speaker 1: to diminish them. Biologists now believe modern bison in fact 100 00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:25,960 Speaker 1: are a classic example of anthropogenic selection. Their size and 101 00:07:26,160 --> 00:07:31,120 Speaker 1: rapid reproduction a natural increase of about eighteen percent selected 102 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:35,280 Speaker 1: by human and gray wolf predation that made the modern 103 00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:39,080 Speaker 1: bison one of the most perfectly adapted of all American species. 104 00:07:40,400 --> 00:07:43,840 Speaker 1: The way to imagine these immense herds is by understanding 105 00:07:43,880 --> 00:07:47,760 Speaker 1: their seasonal rounds, and the proper beginning is in the 106 00:07:47,840 --> 00:07:53,320 Speaker 1: scorching heat of late summer, when bison cows become receptive 107 00:07:53,400 --> 00:07:57,560 Speaker 1: to sex. Over the next chaotic few weeks, the rumbling 108 00:07:57,640 --> 00:08:02,280 Speaker 1: bellows of two thousand pounds bulls created a dan herd 109 00:08:02,520 --> 00:08:06,520 Speaker 1: nowhere else on the planet, audible for miles across the 110 00:08:06,560 --> 00:08:12,440 Speaker 1: boundless plains. The oddly front weighted males jousted, headbutted, and 111 00:08:12,520 --> 00:08:16,760 Speaker 1: hooked at one another in dust shrouded battles for females 112 00:08:17,600 --> 00:08:21,240 Speaker 1: half the size of the bulls. Cows didn't always honor 113 00:08:21,280 --> 00:08:25,120 Speaker 1: the winners of these contests, often rejecting both strivers for 114 00:08:25,200 --> 00:08:29,280 Speaker 1: a higher ranking bull elsewhere. Over the few weeks of rut, 115 00:08:29,480 --> 00:08:33,439 Speaker 1: some bulls bred as many as forty cows others completely 116 00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:34,040 Speaker 1: struck out. 117 00:08:35,120 --> 00:08:37,280 Speaker 2: Once the rut was over, bison. 118 00:08:36,920 --> 00:08:41,160 Speaker 1: Would began their general seasonal drift southward, the small grouping 119 00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:44,719 Speaker 1: herds led by high ranking cows until they were eight 120 00:08:44,840 --> 00:08:48,439 Speaker 1: years of age. Younger cows were subordinate to older females, 121 00:08:49,240 --> 00:08:53,640 Speaker 1: whether southward or somewhere more local. The destinations for these 122 00:08:53,679 --> 00:08:58,680 Speaker 1: migrations were forested river valleys, where bison spent months of 123 00:08:58,720 --> 00:09:02,760 Speaker 1: snow and cold, protected from the winds that swept open 124 00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:06,960 Speaker 1: country snow in the drifts. As winter wound down in April, 125 00:09:07,120 --> 00:09:11,559 Speaker 1: pregnant cows dropped their young, and while eagles waddled around 126 00:09:11,640 --> 00:09:15,360 Speaker 1: among them picking at after birth, the cows urged their 127 00:09:15,440 --> 00:09:19,160 Speaker 1: bright red calves to stand, pop their tails over their 128 00:09:19,200 --> 00:09:23,760 Speaker 1: backs and run. Gray wolves, knowing well when a bison 129 00:09:23,840 --> 00:09:28,000 Speaker 1: herd was vulnerable, were certain to be trotting by yellow eyes, 130 00:09:28,080 --> 00:09:33,440 Speaker 1: fixed red tongues lolling. Following the spring green up into 131 00:09:33,480 --> 00:09:37,760 Speaker 1: open country. The herds then sorted themselves into gender groups. 132 00:09:37,920 --> 00:09:41,840 Speaker 1: Through spring and early summer, bachelor bulls worked their way 133 00:09:41,840 --> 00:09:46,319 Speaker 1: across the Upland plains in all boy posses, while cow 134 00:09:46,520 --> 00:09:51,000 Speaker 1: calf herds stayed separate and distant until the pheromones of 135 00:09:51,080 --> 00:09:54,960 Speaker 1: late summer began to drift through the hot air once again. 136 00:09:57,280 --> 00:10:01,480 Speaker 1: Like many prey animals, bison evolved to be highly social 137 00:10:01,679 --> 00:10:06,240 Speaker 1: herd creatures. Numbers mean lots of eyes on predators and 138 00:10:06,440 --> 00:10:10,440 Speaker 1: enhanced chances you're not the target. The herds varied in 139 00:10:10,600 --> 00:10:14,680 Speaker 1: size and makeup across the seasons. At the macro level, 140 00:10:15,080 --> 00:10:19,600 Speaker 1: three massive groupings spread across the western landscapes of the continent, 141 00:10:20,120 --> 00:10:24,160 Speaker 1: in timbered parts of Alberta, the Yukon, and Alaska. There 142 00:10:24,280 --> 00:10:27,760 Speaker 1: was a distinctive type we now called the wood bison 143 00:10:28,400 --> 00:10:31,240 Speaker 1: out on the grassy sweeps east of the Rockies. A 144 00:10:31,400 --> 00:10:36,199 Speaker 1: northern herd of plains bison ranged from Alberta to Nebraska. 145 00:10:36,880 --> 00:10:40,800 Speaker 1: From there to the yellow expanses of Texas. Another mass 146 00:10:40,840 --> 00:10:44,440 Speaker 1: worked across the southern plains in search of rains and 147 00:10:44,520 --> 00:10:49,960 Speaker 1: greening grasses. These big aggregations of animals groupings really made 148 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:54,280 Speaker 1: up of thousands of smaller herds, drifted southward in winter, 149 00:10:54,720 --> 00:10:59,680 Speaker 1: then reversed direction to shift northward in the summer. While 150 00:11:00,040 --> 00:11:03,839 Speaker 1: human rituals that charmed and lured bison may have been 151 00:11:03,960 --> 00:11:09,360 Speaker 1: under the sway of supernatural animal deities, all those bison hunters, 152 00:11:09,600 --> 00:11:14,320 Speaker 1: over all, those thousands of years understood from observation that 153 00:11:14,440 --> 00:11:20,200 Speaker 1: the animals' movements were predictable. They also understood that bison 154 00:11:20,360 --> 00:11:25,440 Speaker 1: preferred green grasses from freshly burned country. Humans had been 155 00:11:25,520 --> 00:11:28,120 Speaker 1: using fire to alter the world to their advantage for 156 00:11:28,160 --> 00:11:33,079 Speaker 1: a million years. In the eastern woodlands, regular human firing 157 00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:38,560 Speaker 1: produced patchy ecotones whose rebounding forests created brows for white 158 00:11:38,559 --> 00:11:44,720 Speaker 1: tailed deer. In the west, fires produced wildlife parks savannahs 159 00:11:44,760 --> 00:11:50,120 Speaker 1: for bison, prong horns, elk, and wolves. These fires actually 160 00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:54,040 Speaker 1: pushed the aerial extent of the savannahs and their animals 161 00:11:54,200 --> 00:12:00,000 Speaker 1: nearly to the Mississippi River, wherever bison hers ranged. Archaeology, 162 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:03,760 Speaker 1: they just have map out a predatory human pattern that 163 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:07,960 Speaker 1: mimicked the prey. In the fall, the hunters set fire 164 00:12:08,120 --> 00:12:12,480 Speaker 1: to specific upland grasslands they wanted to hunt in the spring, 165 00:12:12,920 --> 00:12:16,839 Speaker 1: knowing this would draw the herbs. In winter, those same 166 00:12:16,960 --> 00:12:20,680 Speaker 1: hunters moved into the forested river valleys to set up 167 00:12:20,720 --> 00:12:25,720 Speaker 1: their camps, aware that bison, elk, and deer would congregate there, 168 00:12:26,120 --> 00:12:29,680 Speaker 1: allowing local hunts to take place throughout the cold months. 169 00:12:30,320 --> 00:12:34,640 Speaker 1: These hunters were pedestrians whose only beasts of burden were dogs, 170 00:12:34,960 --> 00:12:40,040 Speaker 1: and preserving meat by air drying was a huge undertaking. Nonetheless, 171 00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:45,160 Speaker 1: in suitable topography like head smashed in in Alberta and 172 00:12:45,320 --> 00:12:49,800 Speaker 1: First People's and Madison buffalo jumps in Montana. Under the 173 00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:53,960 Speaker 1: supervision of hunt managers, they ran bison off cliffs, a 174 00:12:54,080 --> 00:12:59,240 Speaker 1: strategy they learned by observing wolves. They also knew buffalo 175 00:12:59,320 --> 00:13:04,600 Speaker 1: were entirely capable of exchanging cultural information, so at these 176 00:13:04,679 --> 00:13:08,360 Speaker 1: jumps they attempted to kill every last animal to prevent 177 00:13:08,440 --> 00:13:14,120 Speaker 1: buffalo's survivors from passing on knowledge about the strategy. The 178 00:13:14,160 --> 00:13:17,360 Speaker 1: great bison bell of the savannahs east of the Rockies 179 00:13:17,800 --> 00:13:22,200 Speaker 1: was the modern animal's evolutionary home, but bison were not 180 00:13:22,520 --> 00:13:27,800 Speaker 1: just of the interior. Archaeologists reconstructing past climates have mapped 181 00:13:27,800 --> 00:13:33,080 Speaker 1: out a whole sequence of bison's presence absence periods across 182 00:13:33,200 --> 00:13:38,520 Speaker 1: ancient America. The Alta thermal a thirty seven hundred year 183 00:13:38,760 --> 00:13:42,160 Speaker 1: heat wave thousands of years ago, was one of the 184 00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:45,440 Speaker 1: absence periods across much of. 185 00:13:45,280 --> 00:13:47,320 Speaker 2: That core Great Plains country. 186 00:13:48,040 --> 00:13:51,480 Speaker 1: That huge drought, and another one only a thousand years 187 00:13:51,520 --> 00:13:56,760 Speaker 1: ago that lasted for six centuries shriveled western grasslands. Bison 188 00:13:56,880 --> 00:14:01,640 Speaker 1: numbers likely plunged as the herd's sought out better watered 189 00:14:01,720 --> 00:14:05,400 Speaker 1: refuges both east and west of the Great Plains, then 190 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:11,319 Speaker 1: trickled back in when weather improved. Then, between fifteen hundred 191 00:14:11,400 --> 00:14:15,920 Speaker 1: and sixteen hundred, as Old Worlders were settling America, a 192 00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:20,440 Speaker 1: climate changed to wet and cool conditions grew bison into 193 00:14:20,600 --> 00:14:25,000 Speaker 1: vast numbers, sending teeming herds in the west eastward beyond 194 00:14:25,040 --> 00:14:30,000 Speaker 1: the Mississippi River, again convincing Europeans they had found the. 195 00:14:29,960 --> 00:14:31,680 Speaker 2: Eden of the animals in America. 196 00:14:32,520 --> 00:14:36,880 Speaker 1: For some ten thousand years, a lengthy sequence of different 197 00:14:37,040 --> 00:14:41,120 Speaker 1: human cultural groups archaeology has given them fanciful names like 198 00:14:41,280 --> 00:14:47,160 Speaker 1: Mummy Cave, ox Bow, McKean, Pelican Lake, bisont A, Vineley, 199 00:14:47,560 --> 00:14:52,000 Speaker 1: and old Women's lived on bison, drove rivers of bison 200 00:14:52,080 --> 00:14:57,120 Speaker 1: over cliffs, corralled and stalked bison, and built their religions 201 00:14:57,160 --> 00:15:02,080 Speaker 1: around them. This was the oldest sustained human economy and 202 00:15:02,160 --> 00:15:07,040 Speaker 1: American history. Two thousand years ago, when Rome was transitioning 203 00:15:07,120 --> 00:15:11,400 Speaker 1: from a republic to an empire, Besant and Avonley hunters 204 00:15:11,600 --> 00:15:16,520 Speaker 1: were undergoing a transition of their own on America's bison planes. 205 00:15:17,280 --> 00:15:22,280 Speaker 1: The decent people still relied on at adult technology invented 206 00:15:22,320 --> 00:15:26,600 Speaker 1: by Folsome hunters twelve thousand years ago, but the Avonley 207 00:15:26,960 --> 00:15:31,520 Speaker 1: had the newest hunt technology, the bou, introduced to America 208 00:15:31,560 --> 00:15:35,880 Speaker 1: by the ancestors of the Innuit. Even so, the bou 209 00:15:36,400 --> 00:15:42,160 Speaker 1: hardly dented the enormous bison herds. In the early United States, 210 00:15:42,480 --> 00:15:47,200 Speaker 1: thinkers and policymakers tended to follow old world models for 211 00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:52,440 Speaker 1: imagining human history. The emerging idea was that all humans 212 00:15:52,640 --> 00:15:56,040 Speaker 1: shared a common origin, and if that was true, then 213 00:15:56,240 --> 00:15:59,800 Speaker 1: all of us were on the same ladder of progress, 214 00:16:00,040 --> 00:16:04,520 Speaker 1: as it was known, like Europeans, people who hunted would 215 00:16:04,520 --> 00:16:09,960 Speaker 1: eventually become herders, then farmers who built cities, wrote constitutions, 216 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:13,560 Speaker 1: and founded capitalist republics. It was no doubt comforting to 217 00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:16,480 Speaker 1: think that everybody else in the world wanted nothing so 218 00:16:16,600 --> 00:16:20,600 Speaker 1: much as to become just like you. Certainly, no one 219 00:16:20,840 --> 00:16:24,880 Speaker 1: was supposed to retreat back down the ladder. This was 220 00:16:24,960 --> 00:16:29,680 Speaker 1: the organizing principle behind an Indian policy in America of 221 00:16:29,760 --> 00:16:34,680 Speaker 1: converting tribes to agriculture, the ownership of private property, and 222 00:16:34,800 --> 00:16:40,360 Speaker 1: eventually assimilation. But for many Native people the America of 223 00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:44,480 Speaker 1: the sixteen hundreds through the eighteen hundreds offered a perfect 224 00:16:44,560 --> 00:16:49,280 Speaker 1: opportunity to descend the ladder not climate. In those years, 225 00:16:49,480 --> 00:16:52,480 Speaker 1: an unusual number of Native people, who in fact had 226 00:16:52,560 --> 00:16:57,080 Speaker 1: long been farmers, reverted to full time hunting. This had 227 00:16:57,120 --> 00:17:00,640 Speaker 1: been an old fear for Europeans about their their own people. 228 00:17:01,120 --> 00:17:05,840 Speaker 1: Would colonial Americans survive the enticements of wilderness that lured 229 00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:09,359 Speaker 1: young men away from farms to hunted trap. With a 230 00:17:09,400 --> 00:17:13,879 Speaker 1: continental market economy focused on reducing wild animals to commodities, 231 00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:18,040 Speaker 1: not just Europeans, but Native people across the country began 232 00:17:18,200 --> 00:17:22,479 Speaker 1: to abandon their cornfields and village lives and move west 233 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:27,199 Speaker 1: to hunt again. What drove this for thousands of Native 234 00:17:27,240 --> 00:17:31,600 Speaker 1: people wasn't just the market, but an animal revolution. Their 235 00:17:31,680 --> 00:17:36,399 Speaker 1: acquisition of horses created a grand historical moment, one that 236 00:17:36,440 --> 00:17:40,000 Speaker 1: has ever since captured the imagination of the world for 237 00:17:40,119 --> 00:17:44,520 Speaker 1: roughly ten human generations. Conditions were perfect for fashioning a 238 00:17:44,600 --> 00:17:50,000 Speaker 1: legendary American scene, the horse mounted Indian as hunter of 239 00:17:50,119 --> 00:17:55,720 Speaker 1: buffalo and other Western animals. A kind of identic opportunity 240 00:17:56,040 --> 00:18:01,640 Speaker 1: emerged around sixteen fifty and lasted until the early eighteen eighties. 241 00:18:02,320 --> 00:18:06,600 Speaker 1: Out on the continent's Great grasslands, buffalo numbers were soaring 242 00:18:06,640 --> 00:18:11,240 Speaker 1: to its high at thirty million animals in good years history, climate, 243 00:18:11,480 --> 00:18:14,240 Speaker 1: and soon enough trade in the market would set the 244 00:18:14,320 --> 00:18:21,280 Speaker 1: stage for a legendary time for Native people to live large. 245 00:18:21,320 --> 00:18:25,320 Speaker 1: Missing from Western ecology for thousands of years, horses seemed 246 00:18:25,359 --> 00:18:28,600 Speaker 1: to appear almost magically from the southern end of the 247 00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:33,399 Speaker 1: Rocky Mountains. Native people trained to herd Spanish stock, and 248 00:18:33,480 --> 00:18:37,240 Speaker 1: colonial New Mexico were riding off on horses by the 249 00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:41,600 Speaker 1: sixteen fifties. Then came the revolt of the Pueblo people 250 00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:46,879 Speaker 1: against Spanish settlers in sixteen eighty, the rebels seizing thousands 251 00:18:46,920 --> 00:18:49,440 Speaker 1: of horses along with goats, sheep. 252 00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:49,800 Speaker 2: And cattle. 253 00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:54,400 Speaker 1: The cattle ended up eating The Navajos or DNA traded 254 00:18:54,440 --> 00:18:57,280 Speaker 1: for most of the goats and sheep, but the horses 255 00:18:57,320 --> 00:19:02,600 Speaker 1: attracted customers across the West. Pueblos and Navajos traded horses 256 00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:05,960 Speaker 1: to the Utes, who traded them to the Shoshones, who 257 00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:10,919 Speaker 1: dispersed horses throughout the Upper West. Some of those groups 258 00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:14,640 Speaker 1: were in southern Canada, about as far north as desert 259 00:19:14,680 --> 00:19:18,080 Speaker 1: adapted Spanish barbed horses could survive the winners. 260 00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:20,080 Speaker 2: By seventeen point. 261 00:19:19,920 --> 00:19:23,000 Speaker 1: Thirty, peoples who had been on foot for one hundred 262 00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:27,400 Speaker 1: and fifty centuries were swinging onto horses and riding them 263 00:19:27,480 --> 00:19:32,760 Speaker 1: into history. Horses carried big implications for buffalo about to 264 00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:37,080 Speaker 1: enter a modern world. Natural selection hadn't prepared them for 265 00:19:38,119 --> 00:19:42,400 Speaker 1: competing with buffalo for grass and water. Horses were restoring 266 00:19:42,480 --> 00:19:46,720 Speaker 1: a measure of the Pleisocene. But for tribal bands learning 267 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:50,879 Speaker 1: from one another how to ride, care for horses, breathe them, 268 00:19:51,160 --> 00:19:55,760 Speaker 1: all manner of possibilities open dozens of tribal groups. A 269 00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:59,520 Speaker 1: common estimate is three dozen dropped what they were doing 270 00:19:59,760 --> 00:20:03,560 Speaker 1: and rode off to hunt buffalo. Some of them, the 271 00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:07,520 Speaker 1: Comanches of the Great Basin the Suing speakers of the 272 00:20:07,560 --> 00:20:12,200 Speaker 1: Great Lakes Woodlands had never farmed propel. Now by horses, 273 00:20:12,480 --> 00:20:16,200 Speaker 1: they switched their focus from jack rabbits or whitetailed deer 274 00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:20,680 Speaker 1: to buffalo. Some groups from outside the plains did very 275 00:20:20,720 --> 00:20:25,119 Speaker 1: well as buffalo hunters. The Comanches migrated towards the source 276 00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:29,760 Speaker 1: of horses and established a powerful empire on the southern plains. 277 00:20:30,359 --> 00:20:34,080 Speaker 1: The Suing Speakers, who rode westward out of Great Lakes Forest, 278 00:20:34,320 --> 00:20:38,360 Speaker 1: did the same on the northern plains. Others, the Pueblos, 279 00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:42,240 Speaker 1: the Utes, the Salish nest purses west of the Buffalo range, 280 00:20:42,440 --> 00:20:48,080 Speaker 1: and the Caddos, Wichitas, Pawnees, Osages, Aricaras, and Mandans to 281 00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:51,520 Speaker 1: the east remained in their villages but rode off to 282 00:20:51,600 --> 00:20:55,879 Speaker 1: hunt buffaloes several times a year. The Pueblos were farmers, 283 00:20:56,119 --> 00:20:59,960 Speaker 1: the nest purses deer hunters, but with horses, both could 284 00:21:00,160 --> 00:21:04,040 Speaker 1: now make big journeys to haul bison products home from 285 00:21:04,200 --> 00:21:09,439 Speaker 1: hundreds of miles away. The most surprising of the new 286 00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:14,760 Speaker 1: buffalo hunters came from villages of farmers. Though classic buffalo 287 00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:19,760 Speaker 1: hunters like the Crows, the Cheyennes, the Kiowas all came 288 00:21:19,840 --> 00:21:24,040 Speaker 1: out of farming backgrounds. All the Eastern Indians who went 289 00:21:24,080 --> 00:21:27,800 Speaker 1: west to hunt were former farmers too. There were class 290 00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:30,960 Speaker 1: distinctions in most of the farming towns, and the evidence 291 00:21:31,080 --> 00:21:34,200 Speaker 1: is that it was the lower classes who often mounted 292 00:21:34,320 --> 00:21:38,400 Speaker 1: up to ride away to hunt buffalo. Elite families had 293 00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:42,159 Speaker 1: political power to lose if they left, so did women 294 00:21:42,480 --> 00:21:46,280 Speaker 1: who owned the crop fields in farm towns. So for women, 295 00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:49,960 Speaker 1: joining a group now counting wealth and status based on 296 00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:53,040 Speaker 1: the number of horses you own that intended to live 297 00:21:53,119 --> 00:21:56,879 Speaker 1: by hunting could be a sobering step for one it 298 00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:01,520 Speaker 1: implied the backbreaking work of hide process. Becoming one of 299 00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:05,400 Speaker 1: several wives for a buffalo hunting man at least meant 300 00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:08,440 Speaker 1: some sharing of the work burden. But if the band 301 00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:12,800 Speaker 1: participated in the market hunt, a woman didn't just become 302 00:22:12,960 --> 00:22:17,120 Speaker 1: a plural wife. She joined a labor force for men. 303 00:22:17,600 --> 00:22:22,600 Speaker 1: Traversing the planes, hunting bison, training and accumulating horses, and 304 00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:25,679 Speaker 1: engaging in trade with the whites. Was life in a 305 00:22:25,760 --> 00:22:31,160 Speaker 1: state of perfection for women? Well Sue and Speakers had 306 00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:36,720 Speaker 1: a ribald story about ever conniving coyote that helped put 307 00:22:36,760 --> 00:22:38,959 Speaker 1: this new life in some perspective. 308 00:22:39,680 --> 00:22:41,000 Speaker 2: It went this way. 309 00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:45,400 Speaker 1: Coyote had spied a beautiful young chief's daughter he badly 310 00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:48,680 Speaker 1: wanted to bed, but as beautiful chiefs daughters tend to do, 311 00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:52,800 Speaker 1: she scarcely acknowledged him. But hearing that the whites coming 312 00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:58,120 Speaker 1: into their country possessed many wonderful things, Coyote used magic 313 00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:01,639 Speaker 1: to go among them and return with four objects no 314 00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:05,480 Speaker 1: Indian had ever seen. Coyote set up a lodge near 315 00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:08,840 Speaker 1: the girl's tepee, and over the next four nights began 316 00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:12,480 Speaker 1: pounding and banging away as if he were a mad inventter. 317 00:23:13,560 --> 00:23:17,240 Speaker 1: The first morning he emerged with a choker of brightly 318 00:23:17,359 --> 00:23:21,600 Speaker 1: colored glass beads. When the chief's daughter saw Coyote idling 319 00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:25,240 Speaker 1: holding the choker up to the sunlight, she boldly offered 320 00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:28,760 Speaker 1: him a kiss if she could have it. The next day, 321 00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:33,480 Speaker 1: Coyote produced an iron pot better for cooking than anything 322 00:23:33,560 --> 00:23:38,080 Speaker 1: else in camp to possess that. The chief's daughter let 323 00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:42,800 Speaker 1: Coyote fondle her breasts. The third day, Coyote showed off 324 00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,800 Speaker 1: a red wool blanket with stripes in several colors, and 325 00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:51,439 Speaker 1: for that she let Coyote feel her buttocks. Finally, on 326 00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:56,639 Speaker 1: the fourth day, Coyote produced a beautiful mirror. After observing 327 00:23:56,680 --> 00:24:00,640 Speaker 1: herself in it for several long moments, the chief's let 328 00:24:00,720 --> 00:24:04,639 Speaker 1: Coyote look between her legs, But Coyote's response to this 329 00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:06,000 Speaker 1: favor was a frown. 330 00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:07,359 Speaker 2: Too bad. 331 00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:11,240 Speaker 1: He said that you've been made upside down. That really 332 00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:15,760 Speaker 1: should be fixed. The beautiful chief's daughter took her mirror home, 333 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:19,359 Speaker 1: but thought long and hard about what Coyote had said. 334 00:24:19,920 --> 00:24:23,359 Speaker 1: If her sex truly did need remaking, who else should 335 00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:27,240 Speaker 1: do it but the coyote, who'd made so many magical 336 00:24:27,359 --> 00:24:31,760 Speaker 1: new things, Go and fetch Coyote. She told her girlfriend 337 00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:38,720 Speaker 1: and do it quickly. To human observers, bison thronging the 338 00:24:38,800 --> 00:24:43,040 Speaker 1: planes seemed like the stars in the night sky, a 339 00:24:43,080 --> 00:24:47,080 Speaker 1: flow of animal life on a scale only the supernatural 340 00:24:47,240 --> 00:24:51,760 Speaker 1: seemed capable of explaining. The elders of one of the 341 00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:56,960 Speaker 1: historic bison hunting groups, the Lakotas, perceived a connecting energy 342 00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:02,080 Speaker 1: flow in the constant air movements of planes among Western creatures. 343 00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:08,879 Speaker 1: These were connections Lenaean science, Darwinian evolution. Our twenty first 344 00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:12,560 Speaker 1: century genetic science would never think to link together. 345 00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:15,240 Speaker 2: What the Lakotas. 346 00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:20,600 Speaker 1: Called umi or yum was world wind power, the unrestrained 347 00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:25,159 Speaker 1: residue of the energy of the four winds. WorldWind power 348 00:25:25,320 --> 00:25:28,680 Speaker 1: was much sought, in part because possessing it made one 349 00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:32,240 Speaker 1: difficult to attack in battle. But only a small number 350 00:25:32,280 --> 00:25:38,520 Speaker 1: of special animals spiders, moths, dragonflies, and bears, elk and 351 00:25:38,600 --> 00:25:43,680 Speaker 1: bison shared the whirlwinds. Secret air movement in the form 352 00:25:43,720 --> 00:25:48,840 Speaker 1: of seasonal winds, also seemed part of the bison's special mystery, 353 00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:52,640 Speaker 1: bringing them or taking them away. A south wind might 354 00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:56,480 Speaker 1: produce herds that blanketed the landscape from horizon to horizon, 355 00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:59,720 Speaker 1: but the animals could entirely disappear with a north wind. 356 00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:05,000 Speaker 1: That inclination for bison to vanish led to a widespread 357 00:26:05,000 --> 00:26:08,840 Speaker 1: belief in Native America that the animals had their origins 358 00:26:09,000 --> 00:26:14,480 Speaker 1: underground and sometimes returned there. The precise regeneration places tended 359 00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:19,080 Speaker 1: to move as people relocated as tribes migrated onto the 360 00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:22,600 Speaker 1: Great Plains. In the seventeen hundreds. Among the Kiowas, the 361 00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:26,280 Speaker 1: place where bison poured from the earth was the Wichita 362 00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:32,159 Speaker 1: Mountains in southwestern Oklahoma. For the Comanches, bison regenerated in 363 00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:36,359 Speaker 1: the canyons of a West Texas plateau. The Yanos Daccato 364 00:26:37,160 --> 00:26:42,159 Speaker 1: the Lakotas believed this mysterious renewal happened in caves like 365 00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:45,920 Speaker 1: Ludlow Cave in and near the Black Hills, which Native 366 00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:51,200 Speaker 1: people surrounded with petroglyphs of buffalo tracks and human vaginas 367 00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:56,320 Speaker 1: enjoined symbols of fertility. Most buffalo hunting peoples believed the 368 00:26:56,359 --> 00:27:00,480 Speaker 1: bison to have been present very early in creation. In 369 00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:03,520 Speaker 1: this kind of cosmic origin, they were like the other 370 00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:06,840 Speaker 1: great forces of the universe, the sun and moon, the 371 00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:10,800 Speaker 1: sky overhead that would always exist, much as we're all 372 00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:14,720 Speaker 1: utterly convinced today that there's no force capable of erasing 373 00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:16,320 Speaker 1: the night sky of its stars. 374 00:27:16,520 --> 00:27:17,520 Speaker 2: For humans who had. 375 00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:21,240 Speaker 1: Been among bison for thousands of years, the animals were 376 00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:28,040 Speaker 1: similarly beyond all time all history. In the Plains Indian 377 00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:32,160 Speaker 1: creation accounts that undergirded this kind of understanding, the most 378 00:27:32,200 --> 00:27:35,760 Speaker 1: important animals are there at the beginning with the creators, 379 00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:39,199 Speaker 1: before humans joined the world, and it was not just 380 00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:43,160 Speaker 1: themselves as flesh that bison would offer up as gifts. 381 00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:48,760 Speaker 1: Among the Cheyennes, buffalo and thunder gave fire to their 382 00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:53,639 Speaker 1: culture hero sweet medicine. For the Mandana Datzas, it was 383 00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:58,280 Speaker 1: a buffalo bull who gave their culture hero lone man tobacco. 384 00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:02,520 Speaker 1: Somewhat in the same manner that the Greeks regarded their 385 00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:07,080 Speaker 1: gods as partly mortal, most Plains tribes thought of buffalo 386 00:28:07,400 --> 00:28:11,200 Speaker 1: in their worldly form in the same terms as humans. 387 00:28:11,720 --> 00:28:16,840 Speaker 1: Buffalo had families and societies and opinions and memories. They 388 00:28:16,880 --> 00:28:21,080 Speaker 1: were people. In other words, In some traditions, buffalo had 389 00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:25,520 Speaker 1: the ability to renew themselves after death. The Crees told 390 00:28:25,600 --> 00:28:28,879 Speaker 1: ethnographer James Mooney that if you left the head, tail, 391 00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:31,560 Speaker 1: and four feet of a buffalo at a place of 392 00:28:31,600 --> 00:28:37,040 Speaker 1: its death, the animal would regenerate, although bison might regenerate 393 00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:40,080 Speaker 1: and the earth could disgorge a fresh body of them 394 00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:43,720 Speaker 1: like a hive of bees. The hunting tribes understood that 395 00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:49,200 Speaker 1: animal masters controlled access to buffalo. That made access then 396 00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:54,120 Speaker 1: fraught with taboos designed to convey proper respect for creatures 397 00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:58,800 Speaker 1: willing to sacrifice themselves for the human good. Among the Cheyennes, 398 00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,960 Speaker 1: their access to buffalo was the legacy of their several 399 00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:08,520 Speaker 1: culture heroes, Coyote Man and his daughter Yellow Haired Woman, 400 00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:12,360 Speaker 1: who had first released the animals of the planes, along 401 00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:19,240 Speaker 1: with banded specific heroes named erect Horns and Sweet Medicine. 402 00:29:19,440 --> 00:29:23,320 Speaker 1: Like most buffalo hunters, the Cheyennes had stories about times 403 00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:28,480 Speaker 1: when all the buffalo disappeared. In one instance, erect Horns 404 00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:34,360 Speaker 1: performed a particular ritual that persuaded them to return. Later, 405 00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:38,120 Speaker 1: in the beginning time of creation and Cheyenne history, the 406 00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:42,280 Speaker 1: people had forsaken the hero's Sweet Medicine, and once again 407 00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:43,480 Speaker 1: the buffalo and all. 408 00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:44,760 Speaker 2: The animals disappeared. 409 00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:50,080 Speaker 1: An apology to Sweet Medicine led him to reaffirm that 410 00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:54,160 Speaker 1: it was a ceremony that would call on the animals 411 00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:59,560 Speaker 1: to reappear. This ceremony was called among the Cheyennes the Massam. 412 00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,520 Speaker 1: It was a great animal dance at bare Butte that 413 00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:08,920 Speaker 1: recreated Coyote Man's and yellow haired Woman's release of the 414 00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:12,640 Speaker 1: animals in mythic time. Two of the arrows in their 415 00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,600 Speaker 1: sacred arrow bundle gave Cheyennes the power to kill as 416 00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:19,920 Speaker 1: many buffalo as they wanted, and that buffalo was opened 417 00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:25,680 Speaker 1: during the Massom. Cheyennes performed the Massam well past eighteen fifty. 418 00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:27,600 Speaker 2: Others of their. 419 00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,880 Speaker 1: Bands set up a lone teepee at their summer sun dances, 420 00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:34,880 Speaker 1: representing the mountain from which the Sioux Tai band's hero 421 00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:39,800 Speaker 1: erect horns had once released Buffalo from hiding and reanimated 422 00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:43,040 Speaker 1: the earth in the animal life of the Planes. The 423 00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:46,800 Speaker 1: Blackfeet and the Grovans also had stories about what happened 424 00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:51,120 Speaker 1: when Buffalo disappeared, a calamity finally rited by their own 425 00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:55,560 Speaker 1: cultural heroes. Nappy among the black Feet and meet Aught 426 00:30:55,680 --> 00:30:59,240 Speaker 1: in the case of the Grovants, who turned themselves into dogs, 427 00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:02,480 Speaker 1: found the cave where the gods were holding the animals 428 00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:05,920 Speaker 1: and drove them out. The Blackfeet called the entity that 429 00:31:06,080 --> 00:31:10,720 Speaker 1: kept Buffalo away Buffalo Steeler. When he was unhappy, he 430 00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:14,720 Speaker 1: kept buffalo secreted away in a cave up Cutbank Canyon. 431 00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:19,000 Speaker 1: The Mandans too had a traditional story about a time 432 00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:23,239 Speaker 1: when all the buffalo disappeared. In this case, it was 433 00:31:23,320 --> 00:31:27,320 Speaker 1: because Hoida, a speckled eagle who was the master of 434 00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:31,920 Speaker 1: all the animals, had quarreled with Lone Man, the first Mandan, 435 00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:37,160 Speaker 1: and his punishment decided to withhold all the animals inside 436 00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:43,960 Speaker 1: dog den. Butte after involved negotiations, Lone Man finally convinced 437 00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:48,600 Speaker 1: Hoida to release the animals to the people. Among the Mandans, 438 00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:52,960 Speaker 1: the ceremonies that re enacted these negotiations were known as 439 00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:58,680 Speaker 1: snow owl and okeepa. The primary animal access ceremony of 440 00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:04,080 Speaker 1: the hadassas known as red stick. How did the culture 441 00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:09,720 Speaker 1: heroes perform these miracles? Generations of living alongside planes animals 442 00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:13,800 Speaker 1: had fashioned among Indian people a body of cultural stories 443 00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:17,440 Speaker 1: that credited the buffalo's willingness to render itself to hunters 444 00:32:17,560 --> 00:32:23,280 Speaker 1: to the mythic kinship pies between the two species. The 445 00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:28,760 Speaker 1: common thread was ritually re establishing the kinship tie between 446 00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:33,800 Speaker 1: human beings and buffalo through ceremonies that got at the 447 00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:38,720 Speaker 1: heart of the native explanation of their world. Thanks to 448 00:32:38,800 --> 00:32:42,520 Speaker 1: artists George Catlin and Carl Bodmer, were at least nominally 449 00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:46,760 Speaker 1: conversant with the outer skins of some of them. What 450 00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:52,760 Speaker 1: the artists portrayed were animal costume dancers recreating the ancient 451 00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:57,600 Speaker 1: stories with special lodges and altars that represented the mountains 452 00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,520 Speaker 1: or caves where the animal masters hid by buffalo and 453 00:33:00,560 --> 00:33:05,120 Speaker 1: other creatures when they were displeased. Ceremonies like snow Owl 454 00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:11,760 Speaker 1: and red Stick even featured symbolic sexuality to stimulate bison fertility. 455 00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:16,040 Speaker 1: In the early eighteen hundreds, when descriptions of these parts 456 00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:19,160 Speaker 1: of the ceremonies by observers like Lewis and Clark appeared 457 00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:24,000 Speaker 1: in print, they were primly rendered in Latin. As bison 458 00:33:24,120 --> 00:33:28,360 Speaker 1: began appreciably to diminish in numbers and the ancient ceremonies 459 00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:32,240 Speaker 1: failed to restore them, some Native people seemed to adjust 460 00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:35,800 Speaker 1: their thinking. We can't know what the Indians who danced 461 00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:39,360 Speaker 1: around and painted William T. Horned as bull in eighteen 462 00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:42,680 Speaker 1: eighty six thought about why bison had become so few. 463 00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:47,000 Speaker 1: But in the eighteen sixties, a US Peace Commission had 464 00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:51,520 Speaker 1: asked tribal representatives why they believed bison were going away. 465 00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:56,720 Speaker 1: By then, planes Indians clearly were worried about the trend. 466 00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:02,840 Speaker 1: The Kiowa calendars and aunt Kiowa historians painted on buffalo 467 00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:06,640 Speaker 1: robes by the eighteen forties had begun referring to such 468 00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:09,319 Speaker 1: shortages of buffalo and the southern plains that it was 469 00:34:09,360 --> 00:34:13,480 Speaker 1: impossible for their bands to assemble to hold sun dances anymore. 470 00:34:14,440 --> 00:34:18,680 Speaker 1: Among the Western Siouan peoples, their version of tribal histories 471 00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:22,520 Speaker 1: were called winter counts, and these showed that from eighteen 472 00:34:22,640 --> 00:34:27,000 Speaker 1: forty two to eighteen forty four, the most significant events 473 00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:34,320 Speaker 1: were the extended buffalo calling ceremonies their shamans performed the tribes. 474 00:34:34,360 --> 00:34:39,000 Speaker 1: The Peace Commission interviewed offered various explanations for what was 475 00:34:39,080 --> 00:34:42,560 Speaker 1: happening to Buffalo, most of which laid blame on either 476 00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:46,200 Speaker 1: of the whites on the overland trails. Are on may 477 00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:51,040 Speaker 1: Tea hunters from Canada, one western Lakota A pine that 478 00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:54,320 Speaker 1: he thought bison were becoming so few because they simply 479 00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:58,320 Speaker 1: couldn't abide the smell of white people. By this point, 480 00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:02,400 Speaker 1: the Indian hunt for bison rode for trade was decades old, 481 00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:06,560 Speaker 1: and another thought Indians themselves were killing too many for 482 00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:11,640 Speaker 1: the trade, as the Nez Perce hunter yellow Wolf later confessed, 483 00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:15,760 Speaker 1: I killed yearlings. Mostly it was robes. We were after 484 00:35:16,080 --> 00:35:19,440 Speaker 1: more than meat, he said. By the time of the 485 00:35:19,480 --> 00:35:23,400 Speaker 1: peace commission, there was growing inner tribal competition for every 486 00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:27,840 Speaker 1: remaining pocket of buffalo in the less hunted zones between tribes, 487 00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:31,919 Speaker 1: pockets that got doubled up one by one as expansionist 488 00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:37,799 Speaker 1: Lakotas and Comanches displaced tribes with prime remaining buffalo pastures. 489 00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:39,680 Speaker 2: We stole the. 490 00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:44,160 Speaker 1: Hunting grounds of the crows. One Cheyenne later boasted about 491 00:35:44,200 --> 00:35:47,840 Speaker 1: the war. The Lakotas and Cheyennes prosecuted against the Crows 492 00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:52,200 Speaker 1: because they were the best. Then suddenly it was all 493 00:35:52,239 --> 00:35:56,520 Speaker 1: over on the southern plains, the kaiawas concluded that the 494 00:35:56,600 --> 00:36:01,600 Speaker 1: bison had finally returned to the earth. For other groups, 495 00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:06,520 Speaker 1: the ceremonies the culture heroes taught had somehow lost their power. 496 00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:12,080 Speaker 1: A new pan tribal ceremony, the Ghost Dance, now swept 497 00:36:12,080 --> 00:36:15,319 Speaker 1: across the plains, with a promise that buffalo would re 498 00:36:15,400 --> 00:36:20,479 Speaker 1: emerge in the millions and overspread the world again. Even 499 00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:24,160 Speaker 1: after Lakota's at wounded me were mowed down for dancing 500 00:36:24,239 --> 00:36:28,320 Speaker 1: the ghost dance. A Southern Cheyenne priest in western Oklahoma 501 00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:33,360 Speaker 1: named Buffalo coming Out repeatedly performed ceremonies in treating the 502 00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:38,920 Speaker 1: bison to re emerge from hiding mountain in the Wichita Range, 503 00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:43,319 Speaker 1: but by eighteen ninety five even he had given up. 504 00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:49,480 Speaker 1: When the photographer Edward Curtis interviewed Lakota elders at Pine 505 00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:54,000 Speaker 1: Ridge in nineteen o five and asked them what became 506 00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:59,920 Speaker 1: of the buffalo, their answer was simple, confused and unsatisfying 507 00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:04,120 Speaker 1: so far as they could determine. They told Curtis the 508 00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:10,960 Speaker 1: explanation was walk on a mystery. 509 00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:21,040 Speaker 3: When we talk about bison and people in North America 510 00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:27,360 Speaker 3: specific I mean, I've obviously taught a class on people 511 00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:30,799 Speaker 3: and bison and horses in North America, and it's one 512 00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:33,160 Speaker 3: of those animals where you have to understand its life 513 00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:37,799 Speaker 3: history to really better understand its relationship with people. And 514 00:37:37,880 --> 00:37:39,839 Speaker 3: I find that to be a really that was one 515 00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:42,040 Speaker 3: of the things that I think blew my mind when 516 00:37:42,080 --> 00:37:46,200 Speaker 3: when I was initially familiarizing myself with like serious scholarship 517 00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:50,560 Speaker 3: on this subject. But the biology of the animal is 518 00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:55,400 Speaker 3: has this really formative influence on its relationship with people 519 00:37:56,080 --> 00:37:58,279 Speaker 3: and you kind of get into that in this in 520 00:37:58,320 --> 00:37:58,920 Speaker 3: this chapter. 521 00:37:59,719 --> 00:38:03,760 Speaker 1: Yeah, I do, I try to, you know, so the bison, 522 00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:07,800 Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you have to start out by 523 00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:16,600 Speaker 1: conceding that this was, for many centuries of American history 524 00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:18,040 Speaker 1: the kind. 525 00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:18,680 Speaker 2: Of animal that. 526 00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:25,200 Speaker 1: Around the world was most closely identified with America. And 527 00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:29,359 Speaker 1: when people anywhere around the globe thought of America, they 528 00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:33,920 Speaker 1: imagined vast herds of these animals that had been in 529 00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:38,960 Speaker 1: place for who knew how long, and of course those 530 00:38:39,000 --> 00:38:43,960 Speaker 1: animals being hunted by native people on horseback. And what 531 00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:48,120 Speaker 1: we know from the historical story is that particular image 532 00:38:48,120 --> 00:38:53,320 Speaker 1: is actually one of a fairly limited range in terms 533 00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:56,960 Speaker 1: of time. It only occurs for maybe two hundred and 534 00:38:56,960 --> 00:39:02,160 Speaker 1: fifty years at least, the horseback part. But people had 535 00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:08,759 Speaker 1: been engaged with bison in North America for twenty thousand years, probably, 536 00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:12,960 Speaker 1: and long enough, in fact, that large versions of the 537 00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:16,719 Speaker 1: bison that had existed during the Pleistocene had become extinct. 538 00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:21,120 Speaker 1: And we think that the animal that survived, the historic 539 00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:24,799 Speaker 1: and modern bison that we all know today, was an 540 00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:32,200 Speaker 1: animal that biologically was Its evolution was in part anthropogenic. 541 00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:37,279 Speaker 1: It was shaped by the presence of human and canid predators, 542 00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:42,920 Speaker 1: and those pressures caused that animal to become smaller than 543 00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,120 Speaker 1: the creatures of the than its predecessors in the Pleistocene, 544 00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:52,680 Speaker 1: to have a quicker generational turnover, and probably to adapt 545 00:39:53,239 --> 00:39:57,680 Speaker 1: almost perfectly to the grasslands of the middle of the continent. 546 00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:02,239 Speaker 1: And so it's an animal that is kind of not 547 00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:05,560 Speaker 1: just in a historic sense, one that the world knows 548 00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:09,719 Speaker 1: about with respect to America, but it's one that has 549 00:40:09,800 --> 00:40:12,399 Speaker 1: been in place for a very, very long time, and 550 00:40:12,440 --> 00:40:15,680 Speaker 1: the human engagement with it is very old. I make 551 00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:21,440 Speaker 1: the point in this particular episode that the oldest economy, 552 00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:24,840 Speaker 1: sustained economy we have for human beings in North America 553 00:40:25,200 --> 00:40:29,120 Speaker 1: is the buffalo hunt. I mean, it's gone on for many, many, 554 00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:31,799 Speaker 1: many thousands of years, and so that made it a 555 00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:35,960 Speaker 1: particular shock for it to only one hundred and fifty 556 00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:39,799 Speaker 1: years ago to come to an end. That's part of 557 00:40:39,840 --> 00:40:46,840 Speaker 1: the I think the psychic effect of losing that still. 558 00:40:46,960 --> 00:40:50,120 Speaker 1: Maybe a lot of modern Americans don't think about that 559 00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:52,560 Speaker 1: anymore or experience it, but those of us who pay 560 00:40:52,600 --> 00:40:55,279 Speaker 1: attention to history I certainly do. 561 00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:59,560 Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, when we were just working on this 562 00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:04,120 Speaker 3: Most and Hide Hunter's audiobook, Steve and I were trying 563 00:41:04,120 --> 00:41:09,440 Speaker 3: to come up with even global analogs to the the 564 00:41:09,560 --> 00:41:12,040 Speaker 3: duration of that human I mean, I can't really think 565 00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:15,840 Speaker 3: of any other example in world history. There's probably fishing 566 00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,520 Speaker 3: villages that have caught some of the same fish for 567 00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:22,759 Speaker 3: twelve thousand years, but it doesn't I mean, there's really 568 00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,080 Speaker 3: nothing else that comes to mind that approximates the relationship 569 00:41:26,080 --> 00:41:28,280 Speaker 3: between Native people and bison and North America. 570 00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:31,719 Speaker 1: Yeah, not even globally. I think you're right about that, 571 00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:33,839 Speaker 1: you know, I mean, and you can you can kind 572 00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:37,279 Speaker 1: of argue in a biological or an ecological sense it okay, 573 00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:41,200 Speaker 1: so will debase in Africa kind of serve a similar 574 00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:44,680 Speaker 1: role as a planes animal that migrates in very large 575 00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:51,719 Speaker 1: herbs back and forth across through East Africa. But the 576 00:41:52,080 --> 00:42:00,720 Speaker 1: kind of close relationship between bison and nat if people, 577 00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:04,719 Speaker 1: it just doesn't really. I mean, the Cariboo hunters of 578 00:42:05,040 --> 00:42:08,160 Speaker 1: the far North may be come as close as we 579 00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:10,799 Speaker 1: can find, and you know, and those people I think, 580 00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:15,279 Speaker 1: as the people I've talked to in Alaska and the 581 00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:20,040 Speaker 1: Brooks Range country, for example, the gwich And people kind 582 00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:23,319 Speaker 1: of thinking themselves as caribou hunters that I mean, and 583 00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:25,480 Speaker 1: they use this because I think they know that the 584 00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:29,320 Speaker 1: rest of us in America can relate to the bison story. 585 00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:33,080 Speaker 2: They call themselves Okay, so we're we're that's what we are. 586 00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:36,319 Speaker 1: We hunt caribou the same way people hunting bison. But 587 00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:40,920 Speaker 1: it's probably only a shadow really of what this bison 588 00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:45,000 Speaker 1: story was. So, yeah, it's it's something if you can, 589 00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:48,239 Speaker 1: if you know, if listeners can wrap their minds around it. 590 00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:52,520 Speaker 1: It's the sort of thing that has gone on here far, 591 00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:58,000 Speaker 1: multiple times, longer than the United States has existed as 592 00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:02,200 Speaker 1: a country. And you have to rich your imagination out 593 00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:07,319 Speaker 1: to comprehend vast reaches of time, rather than doing what 594 00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:09,560 Speaker 1: most of us do, which is, you know, you just 595 00:43:09,680 --> 00:43:14,240 Speaker 1: focus on the immediate present of your moment in time. 596 00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:16,080 Speaker 2: I find it. 597 00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:21,160 Speaker 1: Stimulating to stretch my imagination to try to look at 598 00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:25,520 Speaker 1: a part of the world, like say eastern Montana, for example, 599 00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:28,600 Speaker 1: or West Texas and say, wow, just one hundred and 600 00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:32,239 Speaker 1: fifty years ago, this was a completely different place. Yeah, 601 00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:34,120 Speaker 1: and it had been that kind of place for a 602 00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:34,640 Speaker 1: long time. 603 00:43:35,719 --> 00:43:35,919 Speaker 2: Yeah. 604 00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:44,040 Speaker 3: And I think stemming from that long relationship there's between 605 00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:48,960 Speaker 3: Native people in Buffalo, they have a highly specialized understanding 606 00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:52,400 Speaker 3: of Buffalo behavior in buffalo habits, and. 607 00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:55,040 Speaker 2: They have this. 608 00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:58,480 Speaker 3: Incredible knowledge of the animal and what it does sort 609 00:43:58,480 --> 00:44:02,320 Speaker 3: of seasonally, but they explain it in ways that don't 610 00:44:02,360 --> 00:44:06,120 Speaker 3: align with what the Western science tells us. And I 611 00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:10,040 Speaker 3: always think this is like an interesting distinction to sort 612 00:44:10,080 --> 00:44:12,560 Speaker 3: of wrap your mind around, is that they explain these 613 00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:17,120 Speaker 3: things in terms of obligations and reciprocity, and there's sortain 614 00:44:17,320 --> 00:44:23,359 Speaker 3: moral there's a moral relationship with the animal, And even 615 00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:26,279 Speaker 3: though it doesn't explain things in the way that we 616 00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:30,799 Speaker 3: would explain them today, it does explain these things in 617 00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:33,239 Speaker 3: a way that makes sense and is sort of functionally, 618 00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:37,920 Speaker 3: you know, useful knowledge, right, Like, just the difference in 619 00:44:38,000 --> 00:44:41,640 Speaker 3: understanding between Western science and sort of indigenous knowledge of 620 00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:44,319 Speaker 3: these creatures is sort of fascinating. 621 00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:50,879 Speaker 1: Oh man, Yeah, it's it is really fascinating. And I 622 00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:57,279 Speaker 1: think what stories, like particularly the ceremonies that I was 623 00:44:57,280 --> 00:45:01,120 Speaker 1: describing in this the script for this episode, what they 624 00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:05,399 Speaker 1: get us is an opportunity to really look back in time. 625 00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:09,240 Speaker 1: I think, probably farther back than just say the eighteen 626 00:45:09,360 --> 00:45:13,279 Speaker 1: seventies or the seventeenth or eighteenth century. I think these 627 00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:18,000 Speaker 1: are probably really old ways that humans have thought about 628 00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:22,279 Speaker 1: the animals that are around us. And it's, to be sure, 629 00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:29,120 Speaker 1: very different from doing ecological studies or heard counts of 630 00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:31,160 Speaker 1: the number of males and the number of females and 631 00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:34,520 Speaker 1: so this is the number that you can take when 632 00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:40,680 Speaker 1: you're harvesting them, or even modern genetic science, certainly Darwinian 633 00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:46,640 Speaker 1: evolutionary science. Their take on it was completely different from 634 00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:52,440 Speaker 1: all of those. And yet it's somehow, I think, when 635 00:45:52,480 --> 00:45:54,600 Speaker 1: you read it and understand what they were doing, what 636 00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:58,920 Speaker 1: these ceremonies were all about, it is truly to me understandable. 637 00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:04,439 Speaker 1: It's something that seems very very human and probably very 638 00:46:04,560 --> 00:46:08,880 Speaker 1: very old, and it also I think probably had the 639 00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:15,800 Speaker 1: effect of enabling a kind of a conservation preservation cinema 640 00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:22,680 Speaker 1: about the natural world around humanity to prevail. And so 641 00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:28,759 Speaker 1: I really was excited about learning about those those ceremonies 642 00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:31,160 Speaker 1: in particular. I mean, one of the great lines about 643 00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:34,560 Speaker 1: them is that whenever they were successfully performed, the animals 644 00:46:34,560 --> 00:46:37,160 Speaker 1: came dancing. I mean, the idea is that the animals 645 00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:41,319 Speaker 1: have disappeared, and you have to engage in these reciprocal 646 00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:45,480 Speaker 1: and kinship based ceremonies to cause them to return, and 647 00:46:45,960 --> 00:46:50,960 Speaker 1: when you do so, they return joyously. The animals come dancing, 648 00:46:51,480 --> 00:46:56,920 Speaker 1: and it's a Yeah, it's something that I think it's 649 00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,680 Speaker 1: it's sort of like, you know, learning about far Eastern religions. 650 00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:04,680 Speaker 1: I think it broadens your horizons to understand the human 651 00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,400 Speaker 1: condition as seen by a completely different group of people. 652 00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:15,040 Speaker 3: And again going back to this sort of long people 653 00:47:15,080 --> 00:47:19,040 Speaker 3: in bison in North America, there are two huge changes, 654 00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:23,239 Speaker 3: you know, after the arrival of Europeans that upend this 655 00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:26,840 Speaker 3: I don't want to call it an equilibrium, but this 656 00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:33,280 Speaker 3: very long, seemingly sustainable relationship. And one you've already alluded 657 00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:37,280 Speaker 3: to is the horse, which brings people onto the planes 658 00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,799 Speaker 3: and fundamentally reshapes where people live and how they live. 659 00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:45,040 Speaker 3: And then two is the market. And even though it's 660 00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:49,400 Speaker 3: this invisible force like that's probably in all likelihood the 661 00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,280 Speaker 3: biggest turning point in this entire story is the beginning 662 00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:53,200 Speaker 3: of the rope trade. 663 00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:57,160 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is a critical part of the story. 664 00:47:57,239 --> 00:47:59,760 Speaker 1: And what you have to recognize is that the global 665 00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:03,279 Speaker 1: mark it was able in a brilliant kind of way 666 00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:09,200 Speaker 1: to incorporate indigenous people producing their own particular local products 667 00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:11,880 Speaker 1: that were valued by the market all over the globe. 668 00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:15,720 Speaker 1: And so Native people who participated in the robe trade 669 00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:18,400 Speaker 1: who hunted bison for rose that they then traded to 670 00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:24,640 Speaker 1: American and European traders. They were not doing something singular 671 00:48:25,000 --> 00:48:28,080 Speaker 1: or one off. It was something that happened all around, 672 00:48:28,719 --> 00:48:30,680 Speaker 1: all around the world. And one of the reasons that 673 00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:36,600 Speaker 1: happened is because as a result of their particular circumstances 674 00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:41,160 Speaker 1: in Eurasia connected to the largest land mass of the world, 675 00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:45,280 Speaker 1: so that you Old Worlders got the benefit of everything 676 00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:51,640 Speaker 1: everybody invented, from China to India, to Africa to Europe. 677 00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:56,879 Speaker 1: What happened then for a group of people like Native Americans, 678 00:48:56,880 --> 00:49:00,920 Speaker 1: who were isolated from all that is that Old Worlders 679 00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:05,920 Speaker 1: had gone through a metal revolution that enabled them to 680 00:49:06,160 --> 00:49:11,960 Speaker 1: arrive in North America with a transformative technology iron and steel, 681 00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:19,120 Speaker 1: iron products in particular, that basically put indigenous people. Put 682 00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:22,840 Speaker 1: Native people into this kind of position. If we don't 683 00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:26,960 Speaker 1: participate in this trade and someone down the river does, 684 00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,759 Speaker 1: we have disadvantaged ourselves to the point that we're not 685 00:49:30,920 --> 00:49:34,760 Speaker 1: going to be able to compete or survive. And so everybody, 686 00:49:34,840 --> 00:49:37,160 Speaker 1: in order to keep up with this new world and 687 00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:41,920 Speaker 1: to of course take on this transformative technology, is going 688 00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:45,120 Speaker 1: to engage in the market. So Native people get caught 689 00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:47,360 Speaker 1: up in it, and the bison robe trade becomes a 690 00:49:47,360 --> 00:49:48,760 Speaker 1: critical part of it in the West. 691 00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:53,799 Speaker 3: And I think one of the interesting parts of that 692 00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:57,680 Speaker 3: is that Native people had always produced some surplus amount 693 00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:01,320 Speaker 3: of robes to trade with other native people on the periphery, 694 00:50:01,360 --> 00:50:04,880 Speaker 3: and so it's not this they don't have to do something. 695 00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:09,840 Speaker 3: It's within the historic sort of economy that they've always 696 00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:16,040 Speaker 3: operated in. Only now the market's ability to absorb robes 697 00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:17,640 Speaker 3: is bottomless. 698 00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:25,880 Speaker 1: It's bottomless, and so the demand is enormous and the 699 00:50:26,080 --> 00:50:30,880 Speaker 1: supply steadily dwindles. I mean, that's kind of what an 700 00:50:30,960 --> 00:50:35,160 Speaker 1: effect happens with so many of the animals that become 701 00:50:35,239 --> 00:50:38,600 Speaker 1: targets of the global market in North America, is that 702 00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:44,120 Speaker 1: the demand is insatiable and the supply is gradually diminishing 703 00:50:44,160 --> 00:50:48,839 Speaker 1: over time, to the point where why when you get 704 00:50:48,880 --> 00:50:52,560 Speaker 1: into the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties and eighteen fifties, 705 00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:58,239 Speaker 1: Native people, through their own ceremonies, their winter counts, their calendars, 706 00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:02,200 Speaker 1: they're yearly calendars that they keep, are already noticing that 707 00:51:02,520 --> 00:51:06,319 Speaker 1: bison numbers are dwindling. They're going down. I mean, the 708 00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:09,719 Speaker 1: kiawas are no longer able to have sundances after the 709 00:51:09,719 --> 00:51:13,120 Speaker 1: middle eighteen thirties because they can't assemble all of their 710 00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:16,799 Speaker 1: bands in one place, since there's not a sufficient number 711 00:51:16,800 --> 00:51:19,919 Speaker 1: of bison to support them in one spot long enough 712 00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:24,040 Speaker 1: to do the sundance. The winter counts among the Sue 713 00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:26,680 Speaker 1: And speaking peoples on the northern Plains by the eighteen 714 00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:30,359 Speaker 1: forties are all about their shamans, doing these ceremonies, trying 715 00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,840 Speaker 1: to call them bison. So what in effect happens is 716 00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:39,480 Speaker 1: that before the hide hunt takes place in the post 717 00:51:39,480 --> 00:51:44,160 Speaker 1: Civil war years, as a result of a number of factors, 718 00:51:44,200 --> 00:51:47,359 Speaker 1: and I go obviously into as many of them as 719 00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,200 Speaker 1: we understand these days, the role of a changing climate, 720 00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:54,440 Speaker 1: the role of competition for grass and water from horses, 721 00:51:55,200 --> 00:52:01,279 Speaker 1: the role probably of accidentally introduced old world ovine diseases 722 00:52:02,160 --> 00:52:06,640 Speaker 1: like anthrax, for example. As a consequence of all of 723 00:52:06,680 --> 00:52:11,080 Speaker 1: those plus the market, you begin to get a draw 724 00:52:11,160 --> 00:52:15,480 Speaker 1: down of the supply of animals even by the eighteen 725 00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:18,960 Speaker 1: forties and eighteen fifties. And of course, during this whole time, 726 00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:23,880 Speaker 1: as I described in this episode, some three dozen Native 727 00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:26,919 Speaker 1: people who are peripheral to the Great Plains are going 728 00:52:26,920 --> 00:52:29,800 Speaker 1: to mount up on horses and flock to the planes 729 00:52:29,840 --> 00:52:32,440 Speaker 1: to participate in the hunt. And of course there are 730 00:52:32,440 --> 00:52:35,680 Speaker 1: all sorts of other influences taking place as well, the 731 00:52:35,719 --> 00:52:40,360 Speaker 1: overland trails on the part of whites and the shrinking 732 00:52:40,440 --> 00:52:45,800 Speaker 1: of the bison range on all sides. As the removal 733 00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:50,919 Speaker 1: policy puts nearly ninety thousand Eastern and Midwestern Indians into Oklahoma, 734 00:52:51,920 --> 00:52:54,880 Speaker 1: and suddenly the bison are not able to migrate in 735 00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:58,280 Speaker 1: that direction. And because the growth of the human population 736 00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:03,120 Speaker 1: in places like Utah and New Mexico is also going up, 737 00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:06,560 Speaker 1: bison can't go westward. So it's just a it's a 738 00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:12,680 Speaker 1: perfect storm of causes that by around eighteen fifty eighteen 739 00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:17,719 Speaker 1: sixty or so are beginning to bring about a reduction 740 00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:20,760 Speaker 1: in the number. And then after the Civil War, of course, 741 00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:22,959 Speaker 1: as we can talk in the next about the next 742 00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:24,799 Speaker 1: episode comes the High Hunt. 743 00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:28,719 Speaker 3: We'll get into that next time. Thanks Dan, you bet