Customer Reviews

The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Studies in Environment and History)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Andrew Isenberg presents an array of complex and systemic causes that brought about the near extinction of the North American bison. The author's breadth of knowledge related to the bison demise is incredible. The reader is not bored with endless details behind these knowledge blocks, however. Rather, in fairly short order, the reader understands how climatology, geography, economics, sociology, migration and immigration, policy, and anthropology all played a role in the bison's destruction. And while the author presents an incredibily well researched description of the bison's destruction, along the way, the reader learns volumes about how Native Americans lived, changed their lifestyles, and were linked to the bison. The reference listings are impressive for those needing further information and authentication. Anyone interested in how the American plains were settled and shaped, this is an enjoyable read. For the researcher, this book is a gold mine.

Andrew Isenberg provides a complete overview of the near demise of the American Bison in late 19th century. The author's principle theme is an explanation of the causes for the near extinction of the largest North American mammal in the largest North American biome. Isenberg provides an extensive description of how the reintroduction of horses to North America uprooted many Native American peoples of the plains and exaggerated their dependence on the bison. This increased dependence on bison was further fueled by the fur/hide trade of the early 19th century. The near death note to the American bison was provided by the east's increased need of leather component's for it's expanding industry and desire by the Euro-American populace to displace bison dependent Native Americans. If you are interested in complex cause/effect senarios in American history this book is a must. The book has been extensively researched and provides an awesome reference list.

Andrew Isenberg, professor of History at Princeton University, has produced a brilliant monograph documenting the relationship between the Plains Indians, whites and the bison that once thrived on the Great Plains.
Isenberg carefully presents the ecology of the Great Plaines, demonstrating how tenuous the environment is to begin with: drought and fires can easily destroy the short grass that the bison depend on, causing sudden fluctuations in the herds. Given the already sensitive nature of the bison population, Isenberg then discusses the effect of human hunting.
Many readers, accostomed to thinking of the Plains Indians as ancient cultures, practicing a lifestyle as old as time, will be surprised to learn that the tribes of the great plains were largly recent developments. The introduction of the horse in the late 17th century dramatically altered the lifesyles of the plains tribes. Now that horses could be used to follow the bison herds year round, many groups abandoned agriculture and became full time bison hunters.
Isenberg documents the rise of trade networks, and the material wealth that Indians were able to accumulate in the beaver and bison pelt trade. Isenberg argues that Indians increasingly exploited the bison in a non-substainable fashion, thus dramatically weakening the bison population by the mid 19th century. Thus white hunting, which escalated in the 1870s to fill the demand for bison leather machine belts, was merely a coup de grace for the already decimated herds.
Isenberg's thesis rather explodes the old myth that Indians were always ecologically sensitive people who cared meticulously for their rescources. Yet in the end, his message is one of environmental responsibility, as he narrates a tragic case study of unsubstainable environmental exploitation. The book is well crafted and highly readable, and recommended for all interested in the American West.

So often, we tend to think of the near-extinction of the Bison as having been solely caused by overhunting by the fur trade. This book shows the intensely interwoven cause and effect relationships that led to massive changes, not only for the Bison, but for the Native Americans as well. The scope of this book is so much larger than just the destruction of the Bison - it addresses the full range of effects that Westward Expansion had on the plains. To gain a better understanding of the ecological dynamics at play between the Bison, the indigenous tribes, the settlers and the environment - this book is a must.

Andrew Isenberg's "The Destruction of the Bison" shows that the interaction between ecology, culture and economy contributes the the destruction of bison. Unlike most historians who contributes the environmental degradation to Euro-Americans, Isenberg shows that Native Americans also play a role in modifying the ecology. He is able to show how introduction of horses, made Native Americans became more mobile and therefore were able to hunt the bison while riding their horses.

Initially, the Natives hunted for subsistence but later were drawn into the market-oriented economic system and were trading the bison's skin for other European products. Gradually, bison became nearly decimated.

This is an incredible book in this survey of the history of the North American bison population and is very well-written. He organizes this book well and is very readable. Even if readers who do not have prior knowledge of bison or is unfamiliar with the field of environmental history, this book will not pose any difficulty for understanding the complex relationship between human and the environment around them.

You don't have to be a Princeton professor to enjoy this book. Isenberg, who is in fact a professor of history at Princeton, is erudite without being arcane. I am looking forward to his next book, on the social and environmental consequencs of the California Gold Rush. Meanwhile, do read Destruction of the Bison. Here is a book in which everything is interconnected, just as it is in real life. Everything the Indians do affects the settlers, and the Indians lives are shaped by economic developments far from the great plains. If you enjoy, Isenberg's style, you might also want to read, Diana Muir's Bullough's Pond, a book that interweaves complex and disparate events in a satisfying narrative.

American indians and the bisons destruction a great book that tells the real story in an action packed dime novel type story

Isenberg is brilliant and we're lucky to have him out there visiting libraries, sifting through archives, pondering predicaments, and typing up a wonderful book like this one. I came to it trying to understand Columbus Delano's unravelling of the 1868 Peace Treates, the mining exploration of the Black Hills which he ordered in 1872, and his opposition to the 1874 legislation that could have saved the Northern herd. Also I want to understand the effects of the widespread corruption within the Department of the Interior ("venal" is Isenberg's word) and whether the War Department would have been more fair in their dealings with Native Americans. I am still not completely satisfied on those issues and will continue to search, but Isenberg provides more on Delano than any other source I have come across.

Isenbergs strongest point is analysis of the nomad culture that rose to prominance over the settled, agricultural Missouri River villages beginning with the acquisition of the horse and culminating after the smallpox epidemics of 1780-82 inverted the power relationship and left the nomads "virtually unchallenged for authority in the plains." He points a telescopic lens at the nomadic culture and offers detailed analysis from a refreshingly distant, unromanticized perspective, for instance bringing to light other studies that demonstrate "mammal hunting is the least reliable of subsistence sources." It was a tenuous existence, born out of the biological devastation of small pox, and knocked down repeatedly by further epidemics. In 1837, there were mortality rates of up to 90% in one tribe. "Atomization" is the word Isenberg uses to describe the devastating longterm effect this caused. He quotes Denig from the 1850s: "Their former good order and flourishing condition deranged, they are no more the same people. Their tempers are soured and all their fiece passions raised against the authors of these evils."

Unfortunately, Isenberg does not continue this thread beyond the 1850s. During the important post Civil War era, his attention largely shifts to the Euroamericans and his observations there are instructive but incomplete. In 1889, Hornaday included a treatment of the debate in congress over legislation to protect the bison and Isenberg digs deeper on the same subject, but he seems to write without regard to his previous chapters. I would like to read his analysis of the nomads during the 1860s and 1870s. One gets a sense that he might consider this too hot too handle. Perhaps Isenberg feels pressured by his cultural surroundings -- late twentieth century academia -- and self-censors. His tone begins to veer toward the self-righteous and there are some hip-shots at the usual easy targets like Custer (attributed with having "led" the expedition into the Black Hills with no mention that it was ordered by Delano) Kit Carson (killed Navajo sheep and Isenburg leaves it at that) and Sherman (who by his own account was powerless 1870-76, encompassing the same period as the slaughter of the Southern herd.) Like so many other writers on the subject, Isenberg seems attracted to the idea of blaming the army, though the sentiment is undermined by evidence he provides, such as letters written by General Hazen and Lt. Bracket deploring the slaughter of the Southern herd. Isenberg faults Colonel Dodge for not stopping hunters, but the Medicine Lodge Treaty was administered by the Secretary of Interior Delano, who claimed that Euroamerican hunters were not excluded from hunting south of the Arkansas River.

In 1832, George Catlin already forsaw the threat to the buffalo and proposed a "nation's Park" inhabited by both bison and the Indians that hunted them "[that]might in the future be seen (by some great protecting policy of the government) preserved..." Isenberg seems to favor Catlin's voice over all other clamor on the subject but he holds his cards close. He maintains a contemporary academic distance which can sometimes be a great tool and othertimes seem as if he looking through some cloudy pince-nez. It could be instructive to follow Catlin's idea to its hypothetical conclusion-- what-if?-- and investigate what such a thing might have looked like, to fully understand what was lost. Catlin's proposal might seem "patrician" but Isenberg leaves little doubt that such measures were necessary: protection of the greatly outnumbered Native Americans from Euroamerican settlers, territorial politicians, miners, and other Native Americans, as well as starvation and disease; protection of Euroamericans from raids by nomads who were devastated by disease and an ephemeral hunting subsistence; protection of bison from the crossfire of both nomads and Euroamericans to ensure a sustainable population.

This is a great book but there's still more to say on the subject. We need to keep trying to understand.

Great natural history of the American bison and their connection to Plains region native tribes. Important resource.

As all the other reviews are positive, I will add a much needed critical perspective.

The central argument of this book is that:

"The combination of Indian predation and environmental change decimated the bison" (Isenberg, p.3).

As such, this book contradicts massive amounts of primary historical sources that show, un-arguably, that the destruction and near extinction of the Bison herds was a direct result of Anglo predation in a direct attempt to destroy the resource base of the Plains Tribes in order to force them onto reservations.

As the other reviewers have pointed out, it is true that the Plains Tribes were not nomadic hunters for all of their history. It is true that the Tribes adopted nomadic hunting as a primary subsistence strategy only after being forced to do so by Anglo aggression and encroachment.

But from that truth, Isenberg moves on to a series of unproven theories based on questionable ecological assumptions that are rooted in the "new ecology" - an ecological theory that describes nature as a disordered, chaotic and individualistic struggle for survival (For info on the "new ecology" see my review of "Discordant Harmonies: A new ecology for the 21st century).

For example, Isenberg bases one of his arguments on the un-proven theory that early Tribal Peoples, thousands of years ago, hunted to extinction many species of large land mammals.

But the story of the Bison is not a pre-historic story. It is a story of modern history and Isenberg presents no historical proof that the Tribes were responsible for the near extinction of the Bison.

Rather, he makes subjective philosophical arguments against "romanticizing" wilderness and Native American cultures.

From there Iverson uses these arguments as a backdrop to a series of environmental statistical analyses.

Basically, Iverson lays out an exponential statistical model where by he argues that, given the estimated number of Bison deaths necessary to sustain the Plains Tribes, eventually the Bison would have been rendered extinct by the Tribes at some point in the future.

The problem is that this can never be proven because it never happened!

What happened, and it is documented in massive amounts of printed primary historical sources, was that the Bison were deliberately slaughtered by greedy Anglo hunters for their skins and tongues.

The United States Army was in on it as well, as is documented by many sources showing that the Bison herds were decimated in a deliberate attempt to make it impossible for the Tribes to remain living free on the Plains.

Isenberg's book is one that must be extremely comforting to those forces that continue to destroy what wild animals and lands we have left here in North America.