EL PASO COUNTY BISON BONES

By Steven Wade Veatch

American bison, also known as buffalo, once roamed El Paso County’s spacious prairies.  By the time the Colorado territorial legislature established El Paso County in 1861, the bison were largely gone; their sun-bleached bones marked their passing.

Across the nation, these animals once numbered over 60 million; and by the close of the 19th century, only a few hundred remained. What caused the near extermination of the bison is a subject of debate. Three essential factors have been under consideration in this debate.

First, buffalo hunters slaughtered the slow-grazing bison for their hides and left behind the rest of the animal to decay in the blazing sun. The rotting flesh gave off a smell of primal origins. A. M. Bede, a county judge in North Dakotas, remembering his pioneering days on the northern plains said, “The county out here used to look like a charnel house with so many skulls staring at a man and so many bones that newcomers felt nervous, and in some cases, could hardly plow the land” (Henninger-Voss, 2003). Buffalo hunters sold hides for about $2.00 to $3.50 each ($51 to $89 in today’s money). In towns, workers were busy stacking bison hides for shipment by rail. (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. This 1878 photo shows 40,000 bison hides at the Rath & Wright's hide yard in 

Dodge City, Kansas.These 6-foot-tall, hulking animals could weigh as much as 2,000 pounds, 

run up to 35 mph, and quickly turn to fight with their horns. 

Photo: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration public domain.

Second, the building of the railroads contributed to the extermination of the bison because hunters killed them for meat to feed the workers. “Buffalo Bill” Cody shot over 4,200 bison for this purpose in the late 1860s (Andrews, 2016). The railroad also made it possible to ship millions of hides back to markets in the East. Some railroads provided special excursions where travelers shot bison from train windows. By 1870, the Union Pacific railway line divided the Great Plains bison population into two sections, one on either side of the railroad: the southern herd was killed by 1875, and the northern herd was largely killed off by 1885 (The Library of Congress, n.d.). Very few bison remained after this period.

Third, the government ordered the Army to kill bison in order to starve Native American tribes into submission. To hasten this procedure, the Army hired buffalo hunters to kill bison in large numbers. This attempt at obliteration was effective in destroying the food source and placed the Native Americans in dire strait. The Native American population, by the end of the 19th century, numbered 237,000; down from about one million from the previous century (Slaughter of the Bison, 2011).

What is not debated, however, is that in 20 short years, near the conclusion of the 19th century, America’s bison herd was near extinction. Historians estimate 31,000,000 bison were killed between 1868 and 1881.

Fig. 2. Swiss painter Karl Bodmer depicts Native Americans hunting bison.
The painting is part of Bodmer’s collection to illustrate Prince Maximilian of Wied's travels
in the interior of North America, circa 1836. Public domain.

Countless wild bison once thundered across El Paso County’s prairie (El Paso County Government, 2010). Sometimes, as the evening yawned, the deep quiet of the prairie would be broken by the sound of bison hoofbeats as they disappeared into the dusk. Now, only the spirit of the hoofbeats resonating remains, a timeless essence as old as Pikes Peak These herds in El Paso County did not survive the intervention of the buffalo hunters. Its prairie became a graveyard of bison bones from the slaughter of these animals. Early El Paso County settlers, facing difficult times, would go out onto their land and collect the scattered bison bones left by buffalo hunters and sell them. Bison bones were used for industrial purposes that included making fine bone china, fertilizer, and for sugar refining ("Time Line of the American Bison," n.d.).  These bison bones could earn the El Paso County homesteader from $2.50 to $15 a ton.

Not long after the pioneering photographer William H. Jackson took the photo in Figure 3, the bison had vanished from Colorado’s eastern plains, killed for their hides. The near extinction of this magnificent animal is one of the ugliest episodes in the history of American wildlife (Andrews, 2016).

Fig. 3. A pile of bison bones near Colorado City. El Paso County, Colorado. 
Bison bones were collected by homesteaders and ranchers and then sold for industrial purposes.
This brought in much needed cash. This photograph was taken in 1870 by W.H. Jackson
while he was part of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories.
 Credit: US Geological Survey. Photo ID JWH000895.

It is hard to imagine that bison once numbered over 60 million. These animals barely survived annihilation. Today, there are about 25,000 bison in public herds (Time Line of the American Bison, n.d.).

On May 9, 2016, President Obama signed the National Bison Legacy Act, designating the bison as the national mammal. The bison joined with the bald eagle to represent the United States (Andrews, 2016).

References Cited
Andrews, E. (2016, May 13). Bison Selected as the Official Mammal of the United States. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/bison-selected-as-the-official-mammal-of-the-united-states

Bringing the West’s wild bison back from the brink – The Denver Post. (2015, January 23). Retrieved from http://www.denverpost.com/2015/01/23/bringing-the-wests-wild-bison-back-from-the-brink/

El Paso County Government. (2010). 2010 Citizen's Guide to El Paso County Government.

Henninger-Voss, Mary. (2003). Animals in Human Histories: The Mirror of Nature and Culture.  Boydell & Brewer, Limited: Suffolk.

The Library of Congress. (n.d.). The Buffalo Hunter. Retrieved from http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/cody/aa_cody_hunt_3.html

Time Line of the American Bison. (n.d.). U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Retrieved from https://www.fws.gov/bisonrange/timeline.htm

Phippen, J. W. (2016, May 13). Kill Every Bison You Can! Every Bison Dead Is an Indian Gone. Retrieved from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-bison-killers/482349/

Slaughter of the Bison. (2011). Retrieved from Inter Tribal Bison Council: http://itbcbison.com/node/22