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Why Native Americans Lost The Buffalos

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Why Native Americans Lost The Buffalos
The Reason Why the Plains Tribes Almost Lost the Buffalos The Great Plains in the United States is home to many Native American tribes. Those tribes have different cultural practices, food, clothing, shelter, and languages, but they had some things in common. Since they lived on the Great Plains, they used the same resources interchangeably. They used animals for many of their survival needs. The Blackfeet is among some of the larger tribes in the Plains. Even though they relied on a few types of animals, such as horses. The buffalos, also known as, bison, millions of them had been on the Plains until they almost went extinct in the nineteenth century. Native Americans thought that Waken Tanka purposely put buffalos on the planet …show more content…
Native Americans sold buffalo hides to various companies especially in the European nations. There was an enormous amount of trade that happened because of buffalos. Often, hides of buffalo were traded with the European nations. Leather was a valuable material, especially during the industrial revolution. Since there were new innovations in the Europeans countries, the buffalo hides were durable materials for belts in machines. Then the demand was increasing, which lead to an increase in the amount of hunters. At this point, hunters were only hunting the buffalos for their skin and leaving the rest of the body to rot. After the body …show more content…
When the transcontinental railroad was built and settlers started arriving, the habitat of the buffalos was being disrupted. On the trains, passengers shot buffalos as a sport without taking responsibility for their actions, they enjoyed it. The bison hunting had its benefits and its disadvantages because they provided the natives with their needs, but the lives of the buffalos’ were put in danger. As a result of several settlers coming to the plains, the supply for food had to increase, leading to more buffalo hunting. The price of buffalos increased, leading to more profit that hunters could obtain. By the end of the eighteen hundred, there were only a few hundred buffalos alive. There were a few years when there would be about a hundred thousand hides were auctioned within a couple of days. Consequently, the natives were affected by the buffalos being almost gone. Therefore, many Blackfeet individuals passed away because of starvation because the bison was extremely important to

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