10 Things Buffalo Hunters ACTUALLY Wrote

In 1871, Colonel Richard Irving Dodge described traveling through buffalo herds for twenty-five miles. Two years later, he described a plain littered with carcasses. How did the last great herds disappear so quickly? Through ten accounts drawn from historical writings, we examine what Buffalo Bill Cody, Dodge and Smithsonian naturalist William Temple Hornaday recorded about the slaughter—and what their words reveal about their own involvement. Railroad meat contracts. Hunting contests with champagne. A booming hide market. And a museum expedition that killed buffalo to preserve specimens of an animal it feared was disappearing. These accounts reveal how commercial hunting, railroads, firearms and government policy contributed to the destruction of the herds, with devastating consequences for the Indigenous nations of the Great Plains. Subscribe for more Wild West history through the words of the people who were there. #WildWest #AmericanBison #AmericanHistory