>>508899842well in the mid 19th century we did pay people to to kill a bunch of buffalo to get indians to fuck off of our territory. ironically many of the participants in this program were indians themselves. really though most buffalo were killed long before then when the spanish introduced domesticated horses. before that the indians would hunt buffalo by corralling them off a cliff which was deadly to a herd, but it also took a lot of time and planning so couldn't be done as often. with horses the indians could pick out prime buffalo with their bows and guns and so they went after the most tender meat which was the buffalo calves. in one hunt the indians could kill an entire herd because all the young were killed. this dropped the buffalo population from ~70,000,000 in the mid 16th century to ~10,000,000 in the mid 19th century
