Just this week a bison skull was found in a melting ice field at 13,000 feet altitude in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It seems strange to me to imagine bison roaming around in the high mountains, but the evidence shows that they were there. Before the 1800s, an estimated 60-70 million bison (Bison bison), or buffalo, roamed almost all of the North American continent. The mountain bison and the plains bison are different subspecies, with the mountain bison slightly smaller.
In the years between 1830 and 1894, roughly 60 million bison were slaughtered, making this one of the saddest and most shameful periods in the history of wildlife in this country. Not only were the hunters and trappers who took part driven by greed with no thought to sustaining the species, but they were also encouraged and rewarded by the U.S. Army. Bison hunting, you see, provided food, clothing, shelter, and other essential items to the plains Indians. The numbers of bison killed by these natives were not large enough to impact the herds. The military leaders reasoned that if they exterminated the bison, they would exterminate the Indians. So the hunters brought out their guns and killed for profit and for sport. When railroads cut through the great plains, it was possible to ship meat and hides to the east and it was also possible to reach the herds easier. Sometimes bison were killed for their tongues only and the remainder was left to rot.
Even though the Territorial Governor of Colorado passed laws in 1872 to try to protect bison, the last wild bison in northwestern Colorado was killed near the Yampa River in 1884 and the last bison on the eastern plains was killed in 1888. In 1897, the last small herd of unprotected wild bison in the U.S.(two bulls, a cow, and a calf) were killed in the South Park area of Colorado.
While the Army played a shameful part in the bison slaughter, it was also the Army that played a major role in saving remnants of the herds that survived in Yellowstone National Park. General William E. Strong publicly condemned the slaughter of wildlife in 1875, and by 1880, even General William T. Sheridan, who was originally in favor of the killing, had second thoughts. In 1886, he ordered the army to take control of Yellowstone National Park and protect the bison and elk in the National Park from poachers. It is estimated that the bison herds of 60-70 million had dwindled to a pitiful number estimated at 550 animals scattered in small hidden pockets, mostly in the Yellowstone area.
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