Frontier Expansion vs. the American Bison :: American America History

Frontier Expansion vs. the American BisonThe wilderness master the colonist. It finds him a European in dress, industries, tools, modes of travel, and thought. It takes him from the railroad car and puts him in the birchen canoe. It strips off the garments of civilization and arrays him in the hunting shirt and the moccasin. It puts him in the log cabin.... Before long he has gone to planting Indian corn and plowing with a sharp stick.... In short, at the frontier the surround is at first too strong for the man. He must include the conditions which it furnishes, or perish, and so . . . little by little he transforms the wilderness, besides the proscribedcome is not the old Europe.... The fact is, that here is a refreshful product that is American....--Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893The great westward expansion of European American pioneers is one of the most celebrated periods in our countrys history. We consider its ruggedness, its characters, and the many sure dichotomies of the frontier good versus evil, civilizations versus savagery, man versus the wilderness. The pioneers set out to create a new world, to push the boundaries of home, morality, and familiarity. In the process they irreversibly affected the established ecosystems and Native American dwellers. The challenges and harshness of the environment had their knowledge effects upon the settlers, effects that have engrained themselves into our national consciousness. We celebrate rugged individuality while at the same time ignoring the price we pay for that possession and strength of character. Westward expansion resulted in the extinction or endangerment of hundreds of aboriginal species of flora and fauna, altered entire ecosystems, such as the Great Plains, and wedged aquifers and watersheds across the entire nation.One species famously affected by these pioneers and settlers was the American Bison, a relic of the last ice age. It is estimated that over 40 one thousand million of these g reat beasts roamed the American Plains in 1800. By 1883 the population was down to little than 6001. What happened? Why did those pioneers, so appreciative of the bounty that the new territory had stipulation them, slaughter the bison throughout the 19th century?They lived and moved as no other quadrupeds ever have, in great multitudes, like grand armies in review, covering scores of square miles at once. They were so numerous they oft stopped boats in the rivers, threatened to overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in afterwards years derailed locomotives and cars, until railway engineers learned by experience the wisdom of fish filet their trains whenever there were buffaloes crossing the track.