Loss of the Buffalo

What really happened to the buffalo? Buffalo is one of Canada’s known animals. They play a huge part in Canadian history and why the world is the way it is today and part of why the government and the aboriginal people are where they are today. The average buffalo is between seven feet and eleven feet tall and weighs anywhere from 660-2,200 pounds. They are huge creatures and have been around for a long time. Over the years the looks of the buffalo have changed a bit because of the great loss and not always having the right breed of buffalo to breed back to each other because of the limited amount of buffalo. This drastic event hit the aboriginal people the hardest, buffalo to them was everything. The world started to demand/depend on the buffalo until the loss. The loss of the buffalo drastically impacted modern Canada. This paper will discuss the context of how and why they disappeared, and then discuss the environmental impacts of no longer having many wild buffalo.

In the early 19th century, there were millions of buffalo across North America, and in just one herd there were tens of thousands of buffalo (Foster, par.2). Two different waves of buffalo hit Canada. The first one being from Eastern Siberia, where the glaciers retreated and exposed the land connecting Siberia to North America. While the glaciers were connected different species traveled from both places and in all the different animals were the buffalo, they were the first in Canada (Olson, par.6-7). The second time was from Asia, they crossed the Bering land bridge into North America. Both groups of bison had to readjust to a new environment this caused, “... forced Bison latifrons to slowly evolve into Bison antiquus, then Bison occidentalis and eventually into the extant North American bison, the plains bison (Bison bison bison) and the wood bison (Bison bison athabascae)” (Olson, par.8). The buffalo came from a different continent and were able to adapt to the environment and make a home for themselves. There were so many buffalo back then because the only people that hunted them were mestizos and that was after they were already a huge population.

The aboriginal colony relied heavily on the buffalo, the buffalo was their primary food source (Foster, par.2). To the tribes, it was such cultural importance to them, “The hunt and its products gave rise to, and supported, complex social, political and cultural institutions” (par.7). It was not just a hunt or a food source, the animal was important to them and they were grateful for it and would give back in return to the buffalo. When they killed, they used every last piece of the animal and each part was as important as the next. The meat provided good nutrition for the people and kept them strong; they ate liver, brain and nose gristles as a treat and were eaten raw. The dried meat was food that was eaten over the winter. The bones were turned into tools such as knives and if they boiled the bones, they could make glue. The skin was used for shelter (building tipis), they made clothes, moccasins, bedding, saddle covers, and water bags. The feces were used to fuel the fires. The horns and hooves made cups, the fat as soap, the tails as fly swatters, and the rough tongues as hairbrushes (BBC no.1-11). It meant a lot more than just a kill to the mestizo people, they used every inch of the buffalo and didn’t let anything go to waste. They relied on them for so much and wanted to cherish every bit of it.

Before the Europeans came the buffalo population was fine. They hunted and killed what they needed and the rest reproduced. The methods the mestizos people used was, “They used stealth or subterfuge—by cloaking themselves in wolf skin or mimicking the cries of a bison calf—to get within bow and arrow range, or co-operated in funneling the herd towards a cliff (buffalo jump) or a strongly-built corral (pound), permitting a larger kill” (Foster, par.3). There are methods that never hurt the large population, only small herds. When the Europeans arrived everything changed, they brought horses and rifles. The horses were faster and made hunting easier for the hunters. They were able to get right up close to the buffalo instead of having to wait it out and could travel farther distances from the living area. Then in the 1860s rifles came into play, increased the capacity of the killings. This caused a great decrease in the population (par.4). The Europeans then ten years later made killing buffalo a sport, for the whole point of starving out the aboriginal people and making them dependent on the Europeans. The Europeans wanted the power.

When the Europeans arrived in Canada, they started taking everything from the First Nations, the most important being the buffalo. They let the whole world know about the buffalo and how everyone could use their resources for leisure instead of what it was intended for (Foster, par.5). When the Europeans wanted aboriginals to be dependent, they established buffalo hunting everywhere, “In the 1870s, these conditions were met with a steady price for buffalo products, a lack of regulation of the hunt and new tanning processes that rendered buffalo hides a valuable commodity. These conditions encouraged massive slaughter in Canada and the United States, resulting in the near extinction of the bison” (Foster, par.5). The Europeans did not even consult with the aboriginal people, they just came in and made a huge demand for buffalo worldwide. What the Europeans did was horrible to the aboriginal people and ruined the buffalo population forever. This was the complete downfall of the buffalo, the Europeans. What happens next? How does this affect the future?

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After the near-extinction experience, the buffalo had a hard recovery and have never fully recovered since. Conservationists were the ones to save the buffalo by protecting the wild herds that made them a real herd again in the United States (Foster, par.6). But how did the buffalo return to Canada? In 1909 Canadas minister found news that a group of buffalo were up for sale in the United States from the conversations and wanted to buy them as it would be the greatest animal come back in history. When they first arrived, the Canadian government got land near a town called Wainwright, Alberta, and called this land the Buffalo National Park which was later turned into Wood Buffalo National Park. Once the buffalo were returned to Canada the recovery didn’t move faster, there were management issues with the herd and disease came into play. To this day there is hardly any wild buffalo in Canada, two herds of plains buffalo, and ten of the wood buffalo. Although there is not a lot of wild lefts, consumers are still in high demand for buffalo, so the amount of commercial buffalo farming has grown and expanded (par.6). In 2016 there was on average about 12,200 buffalo in Canada, 2,200 plains, and 10,000 wood. In this number, it includes the free ranging buffalo and the captivity buffalo (Clifton, par.2).

Rhinos are a lot like buffalo in the way that they are both herbivores, live in the same type of climates and have the same footprint on the world, this makes them able to compare to the buffalo. What would happen if the rhinos disappeared? If the rhinos disappeared there would be a drastic downfall in the ecosystem (Sterbenz, par.4). Just like buffalo, they are on a grass diet, the grazing that they do helps to keep the land sustained for the rest of the species. There was a study done in a National Park in South Africa that states, “rhinos' decline has already started to affect the structure and composition of grasslands. In areas with a high density of rhinos, the researchers found more short grasses — an important metric for biodiversity, Goldman explains. Although seemingly counterintuitive, grazers, like rhinos, increase biodiversity by selecting certain plants over others, giving other species more ability to grow” (Sterbenz, par.5). This shows that animals like a rhino or buffalo increase diversity and keep all other species at bay, if they became extinct what would happen to the other species. The animals and plants need them a whole lot more than humans do.

Elephants are the engineers of the ecosystem. They may not be as closely similar as the rhino and buffalo, but they do still possess the same footprint on the earth. What would happen if an elephant went extinct? Elephants just like buffalo replenish vegetation which helps the plants grow and maintain the structure and in return, the food supply will always be there (Lindsay, par.2). Elephants greatly increase biodiversity, they benefit almost every species (par.6), a little bit more than a buffalo because they are more just birds and plants (Picardi, par.2). There is a higher diversity of plants and animals in places where elephants are than in places where elephants are not (Lindsay, par.7). Elephants are the main key to the savanna and if the elephant went extinct the savanna would become less diverse and for some places, the ecosystem would collapse (par.10). Just like elephants being the main key to the savanna the buffalo is the main key to Canada not only for the other species but for the First Nations as well.

The loss of the buffalo has had a substantial impact on how the First Nations live today. A researcher for Indian Country Development found that there was not a lot of information about what happened after the buffalo for the First Nations and she wanted to fix that (Kaul, par.9). She was so curious about the matter and just couldn’t understand how everything just changed so drastically for the First Nations and just had to find out. Feir did some research of her own, she “separated bison-reliant tribes from non-bison reliant tribes, then divided bison-reliant tribes into two groups: those that lost the bison slowly over the course of about a century, through hunting, competition with settlers’ cattle and displacement, and those that lost the bison quickly” (Kaul, par.13). Her dividing the tribes into two groups helped in her later studies where she found out that the group that lost the buffalo shrunk in height, anywhere from two to four inches. She also found that the ones that lost the buffalo rapidly are worse off today than the one that lost the buffalo at a slower pace (par.17-18). In today’s world reservations have made the understanding that the tribes that lost the buffalo slow or fast have a lower income than the ones that are not bison-reliant tribes, the slow group has a lower income of $1600 per-capita and the group that lost the buffalo fast has a lower income of $3800 per-capita (par.16). Not only were the effects of the loss of the buffalo economic they were also personal, Feir found that the rates of suicide mortality were higher (par.20). As Donna Feir puts it, “The loss of the North American bison was arguably one of the largest economic shocks in history” (Kaul, par. 21). This loss hit the First Nations the hardest and they are still paying for it to this day.

Canada had a huge roll in what happened to the buffalo and how they dealt with the aftermath. The Canadian government and the military were part of the reason the buffalo almost went extinct, they were with the Europeans and wanted the aboriginals to be dependent, the Europeans and the government made killing the buffalo a sport (CBC, par.5). The government wanted the prairies for the European settlement, so they forced the aboriginals off the land (Olson, par.26). The aboriginals after the destruction of the buffalo were faced with a huge decision on what to do next, with alcoholism rising, disease and starvation they decided to move west and consulted the Canadian Nation (CBC, par.7). Prime Minister John A. Macdonald formed mounted police to have law and order in the west, which ordered the aboriginals into signing treaties with the Canadian government (par.8). The treaties signed were a part of Treaty no.6, this was the promise of food that they were told they could hunt. Reserves were then made for the people that wanted to farm and live off the land. It was also to keep the aboriginals from tampering with the European settlement (par.9). The way Canada handled this situation was not in the best interest of everyone. The loss of the buffalo has greatly impacted Canada and how the government now has more control over the aboriginals than they did before the loss of the buffalo.