Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 2007
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 27, No. 3, Summer 2007, pp. 163-75.
Abstract
Although Leopold's aphorism refers to the common response to human suffering, it also reflects the way many historical accounts of the restoration of the American bison omit an important piece of that phenomenon. Most historians have focused their attention on two elements: western ranchers who started the earliest private herds and eastern conservationists who raised funds and lobbied for the creation of the first national preserves. However, the perpetuation of the image of buffalo in the hearts and minds of Americans was equally important in the eventual recovery of the species. No one was a more effective popularize than William F. Cody, despite his belief that bison neither could nor would recover. Buffalo Bill's Wild West exposed millions of North Americans and Europeans to live buffalo; it provided a market for fledgling buffalo ranchers; and, to a lesser degree, the Wild West raised awareness of the precariously low population of American bison. Cody's exhibitions were important beyond the sheer number of people they attracted. The Wild West rose in popularity at the very moment that bison in North America verged on extinction.
Buffalo Bill Cody is not the first name that comes to mind when one considers preservation of the American bison, primarily because he is best known for killing them. By his own accounting, he shot 4,862 over eighteen months supplying meat for the Kansas Pacific Railroad construction crews. Some would argue this was not such a transgression. He did not kill solely for sport or for the hide and then wastefully leave the carcass to rot; rather, he supplied sustenance for the laborers of progress. In Cody's last interview, Chauncey Thomas portrays him as considering it "not ... so much hunting as it was railroad building, opening the wilderness to civilization .... [Tlhe buffalo had to go as the first step in subduing the Indian." In the same article Thomas states that "the elimination of the buffalo was not wanton; it was necessary." In an earlier article written by Buffalo Bill, he suggests that there were, as of 1897, not enough buffalo left to repopulate the Plains "even if it were desirable to restore them." Based on these admittedly select quotes, one would be hard pressed to make a case for Cody as a friend of the buffalo, much less any sort of preservationist.
Comments
Copyright 2007 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln