Why the Government Killed Millions of Bison to Exterminate the Native People

Now we’re going to jump back to the not so distant past, just 200 years ago to the 1800s. Manifest Destiny is in full tilt. The Native Plains tribes are engaging in a fight against the US Government to save their women, their children, their elders and to maintain their way of life. While we were in those schools that our parents had to send us to while they worked to buy food, we were taught that these people were “savages” and were better off being given the gift of agriculture. What if they didn’t want that “gift?” What if they wanted to live free on the plains like all of the generations before them? What if they lived for the hunt of the more than 30 million bison that roamed the plains with them? The bison that provided them with nearly everything they could possibly need to live a happy, healthy life in accordance with the rhythms of nature? These were people who lived freely to an extent that we may never comprehend in our lifetime. The waters were still clean. The air was still clean. The bison were plenty. The deer were plenty. The Earth provided everything. They were still “Leavers.” The “Takers” wanted them to put down their bow and arrow and succumb to life on a reservation where the “Takers” rationed out pitiful portions of food. Food that was not wild. Food that was not hunted. Food that was not foraged. This resulted in the near dying off of the very essence that drove the Native soul to flourish, which they had been doing up until this point.