The destruction of the bison : an environmental history, 1750-1920 /
Andrew C. Isenberg.
- Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
- 1 online resource (xii, 206 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).
- Studies in environment and history .
- Studies in environment and history. .
Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
The grassland environment -- The genesis of the Nomads -- The Nomadic experiment -- The ascendancy of the market -- The wild and the tamed -- The return of the bison.
The Destruction of the Bison, first published in 2000, explains the decline of the North American bison population from an estimated 30 million in 1800 to fewer than a thousand a century later. In this wide-ranging, interdisciplinary study, Andrew C. Isenberg argues that the cultural and ecological encounter between Native Americans and Euroamericans in the Great Plains was the central cause of the near-extinction of the bison. Cultural and ecological interactions created new types of bison hunters on both sides of the encounter: mounted Indian nomads and Euroamerican industrial hidemen. Together with environmental pressures these hunters nearly extinguished the bison. In the early twentieth century, nostalgia about the very cultural strife which first threatened the bison became, ironically, an important impetus to its preservation.
9780511549861 (ebook)
American bison. American bison hunting--History. Nature--Effect of human beings on--North America.