THE BYPASSED EAST, Chapter 7

Chapter 7, The Bypassed East, gives an account detailing how the British decimated the lush white pine forests of New England to build their navy and merchant marine fleets. The text states, "Almost all of New England's virgin forests are now gone. Northern New England offers a prime example of uncontrolled logging's destructive potential." (p.135,139)

Though there are few trees on the northern plains and prairies of South Dakota, there was a plentiful animal resource reduced almost to extinction during the post-Civil War years - the American buffalo. The buffalo numbered 7.5 million at one time and by the late 1800s were as few as 540. George Catlin, an artist who traveled in the West and painted scenes of buffalo herds, described the sound of a stampeding herd as "thunder on the Plains." By 1900, there were only 30 - 40 buffalo remaining.

A Buffalo Wallow, George Catlin, 1861/1869

For centuries, "Hunting for buffalo was the primary economic activity" among Plains Indians. (p.139) Not wasting any of the animal, they used the buffalo for at least 50 different things, including food, clothing, teepees, water cups and spoons, and fishing line. Because their only domesticated animals were sled dogs, they were limited in their pursuit of buffalo herds until after the European/Spanish explorers left horses behind on the Southern Plains in the 16th century.

The first threat to the buffalo herds occurred after the Indians began hunting them on horseback, rather than following the roaming herds on foot. The second threat, which nearly led to the buffalo's extinction, began when American settlers slaughtered the buffalo for sport and to deprive the Native Americans of their primary food source.

Buffalo being slaughtered by hunters on trains, 1870

In 1883, Teddy Roosevelt, son of a wealthy New York City family, traveled west on the Northern Pacific Railroad to the Badlands in Dakota Territory. "He hired a local guide, rode for days on horseback to find a single buffalo, kill it, remove its head for shipment back to New York to be mounted on his wall."(p.63 Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns)

Theodore Roosevelt, Badlands of North Dakota, 1883

Roosevelt wrote, "The very toil I had been obliged to go through made me feel all the prouder of it when it was at last in my possession. I felt the most exulting pride as I handled and examined him; for I have procured a trophy such as can fall henceforth to few hunters indeed."

Roosevelt, later the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909, described his first trip west to Dakota Territory as a turning point for him. He returned to the West numerous times over the next several years, exploring ranchlands, hunting in the mountains, pursuing, as he wrote, "the strenuous life,...becoming at heart as much a Westerner as I am an Easterner."

Roosevelt never stopped hunting, but his trips instilled in him an imperative to protect the open spaces as national parks and forests. His legacy, writes Ken Burns, "was rescuing large portions of America from destruction."

www.nps.gov
www.museumgreatplains.org/lawtoncentennial/returnofthebuffalo
Burns, Ken and Dayton, Duncan, National Parks, America's Best Idea - An Illustrated Journey, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2009
Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada, John Wiley and Sons, 2009.