Important: Military Question: Did White Americans hunt Bison to extinction in order to kill Indians?

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WARNING: I AM NOT INTERESTED IN MORAL IDEAS AND MORAL NONSE. I AM ONLY INTERESTED IN HARD FACTS.

Professor Quigley, whom I’ve mentioned before, has said that in the history of the West, that WE NEVER ENGAGE IN WARS OF EXTERMINATION. But maybe I’ve found what might be a bit of a "war of extermination". However, if you know of actual wars of extermination, I am also interested in that topic. I’m talking real wars of extermination/annihilation and not the Jewish holocaust crap.

I’m not here to whack my White American brethren. WHATEVER WHITE AMERICANS DID IN THE PAST TO SEIZE CONTROL OF AMERICA IS GOOD BY ME. The conquest and occupation of North America by Whites from Europe IS THE GREATEST CONQUEST BY THE EUROPEAN RACE IN ITS HISTORY. It AMAZES ME that White Americans and Canadians, the greatest conquerors of our race should not be a bunch of weak-kneed grovelling Liberal weaklings.

If our Pagan ancestors had to look at what their offsping did in America and Canada they would definitely give Americans and Canadians a big thumbs up!! Our ancestors totally believed in and loved and applauded CONQUEST. I will return to this. But this is clearly written in history.

So please, White Americans, do not rush to deny this Bison idea because you feel "guilt" over this. I’m not interested in moral junk. I just want to know the facts.

I have been doing some military thinking lately. One of my pastimes is pondering things from military angles. I had actually been pondering a Black and White Race war in the USA. Just giving it some mild thought – nothing intensive. Then I began wondering about the time the Bison were slaughtered, and while I was looking into that, to my amazement I found that some people had been saying that there was a possibility, with some pretty strong circumstantial evidence that the US Army and others were pushing for the Bison to be killed because Bison were the basis of the economy of the Indians. Thus it was said, apparently, that every dead bison is one less Indian.

It seems to me there is some circumstantial evidence that this might have been true.

So if anyone has much more info on this then I’m interested.

I’ll publish some of what I’ve found so far. Look, some of this could be Liberal/Leftist/Jewish guilt political crap. But I think there’s something here, even if it is unspoken.

My next question is this: If the extermination of the Bison were intended to destroy the Indians, then I would like to know HOW EFFECTIVE WAS THIS AS A POLICY?

Is there any proof that it helped to destroy/kill the Indians? Because this is where it is more fuzzy for me. I’m only interested in facts, analysis and cause-and-effect. I’m not interested in moral junk.

Another aspect of this which interests me lies in the fact that the US Army, and even the British Army, have engaged in "war by other means". e.g. British destruction of the Boers, and American/British slaughter of German civilians.

Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia:

Commercial incentives
Rath & Wright’s buffalo hide yard in Dodge City, Kansas, showing 40,000 buffalo hides.

For settlers of the Plains region, bison hunting served as a way to increase their economic stake in the area. Trappers and traders made their living selling buffalo fur; in the winter of 1872–1873, more than 1.5 million buffalo were put onto trains and moved eastward.[83] In addition to the potential profits from buffalo leather, which was commonly used to make machinery belts and army boots, buffalo hunting forced Natives to become dependent on beef from cattle. General Winfield Scott Hancock, for example, reminded several Arapaho chiefs at Fort Dodge in 1867: "You know well that the game is getting very scarce and that you must soon have some other means of living; you should therefore cultivate the friendship of the white man, so that when the game is all gone, they may take care of you if necessary."[84]

Commercial bison hunters also emerged at this time. Military forts often supported hunters, who would use their civilian sources near their military base. Though officers hunted bison for food and sport, professional hunters made a far larger impact in the decline of bison population.[85] Officers stationed in Fort Hays and Wallace even had bets in their "buffalo shooting championship of the world", between "Medicine Bill" Comstock and "Buffalo Bill" Cody.[84] Some of these hunters would engage in mass bison slaughter in order to make a living.[citation needed]
Military involvement

The US Army sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds.[86] The federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, primarily to pressure them onto the Indian reservations during times of conflict by removing their main food source.[87][88] Without the bison, native people of the plains were often forced to leave the land or starve to death. One of the biggest advocates of this strategy was General William Tecumseh Sherman. On June 26, 1869, the Army Navy Journal reported: "General Sherman remarked, in conversation the other day, that the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins."[89] However, it has been argued, "While there is ample evidence that this belief was shared by some of the army leadership … there is little evidence that it was directly acted upon in any significant way."[90] According to Professor David Smits: "Frustrated bluecoats, unable to deliver a punishing blow to the so-called ‘Hostiles’, unless they were immobilized in their winter camps, could, however, strike at a more accessible target, namely, the buffalo. That tactic also made curious sense, for in soldiers’ minds the buffalo and the Plains Indian were virtually inseparable."[89]
Native American involvement

According to historian Pekka Hämäläinen, a few Native American tribes also partly contributed to the collapse of the bison in the southern Plains.[91] By the 1830s the Comanche and their allies on the southern plains were killing about 280,000 bison a year, which was near the limit of sustainability for that region. Firearms and horses, along with a growing export market for buffalo robes and bison meat had resulted in larger and larger numbers of bison killed each year. A long and intense drought hit the southern plains in 1845, lasting into the 1860s, which caused a widespread collapse of the bison herds.[91] In the 1860s, the rains returned and the bison herds recovered to a degree.[citation needed]

How did this affect the Indians?

Bison population crash and its effect on indigenous people

Following the Civil War, the U.S. had ratified roughly 400 treaties with the Plains Indians, but went on to break many of these as the Westward Movement ensued. The bison population crash represented a loss of spirit, land, and autonomy for most Indigenous People at this time.[110]
Loss of land

Much of the land delegated to Indigenous tribes during this westward expansion were barren tracts of land, far from any buffalo herds. These reservations were not sustainable for Natives, who relied on bison for food. One of these reservations was the Sand Creek Reservation in southeastern Colorado. The nearest buffalo herd was over two hundred miles away, and many Cheyennes began leaving the reservation, forced to hunt livestock of nearby settlers and passing wagon trains.[111]
Loss of food source

Plains Indians adopted a nomadic lifestyle, one which depended on bison location for their food source. Bison is high in protein levels and low in fat content, and contributed to the wholesome diet of Native Americans. Additionally, they used every edible part of the bison—organs, brains, fetuses, and placental membranes included.[112]
Loss of autonomy

As a consequence of the great bison slaughter, Indians became more heavily dependent on the U.S. Government and American traders for their needs. Many military men recognized the bison slaughter as a way of reducing the autonomy of Indigenous Peoples. For instance, Lieutenant Colonel Dodge, a high-ranking military officer, once said in a conversation with Frank H. Mayer: "Mayer, there’s no two ways about it, either the buffalo or the Indian must go. Only when the Indian becomes absolutely dependent on us for his every need, will we be able to handle him. He’s too independent with the buffalo. But if we kill the buffalo we conquer the Indian. It seems a more humane thing to kill the buffalo than the Indian, so the buffalo must go."[113]

Even Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School and a Tenth Cavalry lieutenant in the Red River War, discussed this strategy after his retirement: "the generation of the buffalo was ordered as a military measure because it was plain that the Indians could not be controlled on their reservations as long as their greatest resource, the buffalo, were so plentiful."[113]

The destruction of bison signaled the end of the Indian Wars, and consequently their movement towards reservations. When the Texas legislature proposed a bill to protect the bison, General Sheridan disapproved of it, stating, "These men have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last forty years. They are destroying the Indians’ commissary. And it is a well known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle."[110]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting