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| Sunday, 27 November 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Different outlook - The American Bison by Arefa Tehsin
This dark towering animal with long legs seemed as if bending in modesty because of its hairy hump, inspite of its intimidating strength. Its incredibly numbered herds stretched across the North American continent. And one day the modern white man, who has been unable to comprehend or accept Nature in its greatness and considers himself above the creator and its creations, set foot on the land of this black beast. Exterminate Destroying millions and millions of Bison was not so easy a task. Nevertheless it was the unwritten agenda of the white American army to exterminate the Bison, as they were "as uncivilised as the Indians". As the Bison provided food, shelter and clothing to the Indians, its extinction became a personal cause for the American military. They encouraged and rewarded the slaughter of Bison for trophies, hides, tongues etc. In fact General Sheridan told the Congress to mint a medal for the skin hunters depicting a dead Bison on one side and an Indian on the other! Of the 4 sub-species of Bison found, two were exterminated forever, one of them being the Eastern Bison or Buffalo (Bison bison pennsylvanicus) which was extinct as early as 1825. This Bison was found "between the east and west slopes of the Alleghenies, migrating between the Great Lakes and the valleys of southern Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, to Georgia". The Eastern Bison, which was the larger of the species, was incredibly chased, ruthlessly harrowed, savagely denied of habitat and mercilessly slayed. End of last pair Near the source of Tygart's River came the end of the last pair of Eastern Bison with their calf. However, the holocaust of these animals, even after the extinction of Eastern Bison, was far from over. In 1839, a traveller named Thomas Farham wrote that it took him three days to cross peacefully only a part of a Bison herd on the Sante Fe Trail. The herd, estimated to be over one million, was spread over 3,500 km! The famous 'Buffalo Bill' Cody is known to have killed the highest number of Bison. Between 1850 to 1880 more than 75 million hides reached the American dealers. However, its meat was not consumed as it was eaten by the Indians and what a 'shame' it would be to devour the same. As late as 1871, Wyatt Earp, a well-known lawman, wrote about a herd of more than a million animals. By the year 1880 the immense hunt was over, leaving behind hardly any traces of a great misdeed, unlamented and happily forgotten. Sadly I can't end this tale with a 'happily ever after' or 'all's well that ends well' ending (neither for the Bison not the Red Indians). This tale ends with the Eastern Buffalo and the Oregon Bison dead and forever gone and precious few left of the two surviving sub-species. At the anguished reddish grey horizon of the untamed lands a sun had sunk never to rise again... "Gaily I lived as ease and nature taught, And spent my little life without a thought, And am amazed that Death, that tyrant grim, Should think of me, who never thought of him." |
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| Produced by Lake House |
Once upon a time in the wild-wild west lived a spectacular beast - the
American Bison (Bison bison) - along with tens of thousands of other
denizens of the vast expanse of the green and brown wilderness of North
America. 
