ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
U.S. History 1877-Present Videos 173 videos
Have you ever told one of your siblings to stop poking you, only to have them do something like hold their hand right in front of your face instead...
John D. Rockefeller. Greasy robber baron, or philanthropic saint? Why not both? Boy, that's a weird combination...
Today we'll learn about plans to assimilate the American Indian population after reconstruction. If you've ever seen Star Trek, you'll know that fo...
U.S. History 1877-Present 5: Where Have All the Buffalo Gone? 61 Views
Share It!
Description:
The near extinction of the american buffalo totally wasn't all humans' fault...there were droughts and locusts and...well okay it was almost entirely our fault. Let's take a look at why in the video above.
Transcript
- 00:04
Was all this environmental protection stuff really necessary we
- 00:08
mean come on America is a huge place with infinite
- 00:12
resources that will never run out right huh yeah sure [Oil meter decreasing]
- 00:16
tell that to the American Buffalo which was hunted close to extinction which
- 00:20
would have really messed up the song yeah
Full Transcript
- 00:23
seriously though Americans somehow managed to whittle the population of
- 00:27
these giant bovine from about 30 million down to about 300 let's think about that [Buffalo population chart appears]
- 00:35
again 30 million 300 that means the population went down to about one
- 00:41
100,000 of its previous size we didn't know fractions could be that scary nice
- 00:46
going guy so how did the Buffalo genocide go down well it wasn't all [Buffalo's laying dead on the ground]
- 00:51
humans fault one issue was that the late 19th century saw some of the horse
- 00:56
droughts America had ever seen up until that point in the 1870s the Great Plains
- 01:01
were even plagued by swarms of locusts which no doubt led a whole bunch of [Locust appears]
- 01:05
pious farmers to whip out their biblical readings about the ten plagues and
- 01:09
wonder whether they were accidentally allotted land in ancient Egypt well the [Man stood in front of Moses in Egypt]
- 01:14
trouble with drought is that they make it super hard for things to grow and it
- 01:18
sucks for farmers but it also sucks for animals who heed grass like the Buffalo
- 01:23
to make matters worse the droughts led to giant wildfires yeah so not only was [Fire burning in the woods]
- 01:28
the grass sparse and dry it was also on fire which makes it kind of hard to eat
- 01:33
and buffalo had to fight human bred horses and cattle for a little bit of
- 01:37
grass that was left guess who the human side is with in that fight but that [Man stood with cow fighting buffalo]
- 01:41
wasn't the end of the buffalos woes Americans were also going bison crazy
- 01:45
and killing the big beef fees in record numbers how'd we manage that well
- 01:50
railroads had opened up the West and made it possible for anyone with a gun
- 01:54
and a thirst for profit to hop a train and go huntin [People boarding a train]
- 01:57
Plus railroads made the shipment of buffalo hides back east even quicker and
- 02:00
cheaper so more people were getting into the buffalo hide biz farmers wanted the
- 02:05
Prairie lands cleared so they could get to planting which meant those darn [Man inspects land of buffalo]
- 02:08
Buffalo had to take a hike Plus Western myths and
- 02:13
legends about famous buffalo hunters like Buffalo Bill Cody made it seem like
- 02:17
a super American and super cool guy thing to do [Buffalo Bill Wild West advert appears]
- 02:21
well commodities markets for Buffalo tongues meat skins and pelts were
- 02:26
booming and demand only went up as supply increased basically consumers
- 02:32
were desperate for a piece of the mythic American West and the Bison was an easy
- 02:36
symbol to which the Buffalo said hang because we love all the love but maybe [Buffalo speaking to man wearing Buffalo fur jacket]
- 02:41
you could show it without eradicating our population well probably they just
Related Videos
Ever heard of a "living document"? They eat and breathe just like the rest of us! They even walk around on their own two legs. Okay, fine—maybe t...
If the Puritans had gotten their way, religion would play a much larger role in lawmaking these days. Want to know more? Watch the video for all th...
What happened between the creation of the Articles of Confederation and the ratification of the current U.S. Constitution? This video analyzes the...
The Modernists thought the world had a lot of problems, and they were intent on fixing them—or at least talking about fixing them. Unfortunately,...
This video explains Federalism and the quest for a fair balance between state and national power. It covers the progression and compromises of Fede...