tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post235720411803597966..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: William Temple Hornaday: Five Minutes' Work: The Wholesale Destruction of the Southern Herd (1871-1874)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-59797381788854783712011-09-23T05:50:07.252-07:002011-09-23T05:50:07.252-07:00and
wild horse's slaughtered by Alpo to make ...and<br /><br />wild horse's slaughtered by Alpo to make dog food !Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-24433243127182372552011-09-23T05:49:24.002-07:002011-09-23T05:49:24.002-07:00...On a more hopeful note, here are some survivors......On a more hopeful note, <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/american-bison.html" rel="nofollow">here are some survivors</a>.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-2841292974416124432011-09-23T05:47:08.071-07:002011-09-23T05:47:08.071-07:00[continuing...]
The situation of the Indians in t...[continuing...]<br /><br />The situation of the Indians in that summer was desperate. Medicine and prophecy as well as the pressing realities of imminent starvation combined to dictate a policy of defensive aggression against the white invaders. A charismatic leader, Isa-tai of the Quahadi Comanches, counselled war. He was joined by the widely respected Comanche chief Quanah Parker in mounting a surprise attack against the outpost of the white hunters. <br /><br />On 27 June 1874 a large band of Comanches, reckoned to number between 700 and 1200, descended upon Adobe Walls. For three days the outpost came under siege. Finally "Billy" Dixon concluded the siege with a flourish. An Indian party was spotted about a mile east of the outpost. Dixon's own rifle, a .45/90, lacking the necessary range, he took aim instead with a hastily-borrowed Sharps "Big .50" buffalo-killing gun, and fired three times. The third attempt, to be storied as The "Shot of the Century", knocked an Indian off his horse almost a mile away. Chief Quanah Parker, at the head of the raiding party, narrowly avoided being hit. The Indian party then fell back.<br /><br />The setback at Adobe Walls resulted in a general dispersal of the reluctant tribes across the Southern Plains. Isolated raids continued, bringing down the full weight of the U. S. Cavalry upon the renegades.<br /><br />Three months later the celebrated sharpshooter and bounty hunter "Billy" Dixon was freelancing as an army scout when he, a fellow scout and four cavalrymen were attacked by a mixed group of Kiowas and Comanches at a contested hunting site, a buffalo wallow in Hemphill County. Dixon's deadly rifle fire, together with cold night rains, helped turn back the attack; under Indian fire Dixon set up a defensive position, venturing out at one point to drag a wounded man, his fellow scout, back into the buffalo wallow and safety; for his role in the affair the hired marksman, though a civilian, was awarded the Medal of Honor for Gallantry in Battle.<br /><br />This engagement was one of a series of pitched battles that bloody summer between whites and Indians across the Texas Panhandle, to become known as the Red River Wars.<br />An account of his part in the wars is contained in "Billy" Dixon's autobiography, dictated on his deathbed in 1913 to his wife, Olive King Dixon. Dixon had married in 1894 after settling down near Adobe Walls, where he became the first sheriff of Hutchinson County; for the first three years of their marriage Olive would remain the sole female resident of the county. The ex-sharpshooter also became a state land commissioner and justice of the peace. The local Masonic Lodge and a creek in the southern part of the County were given his name.<br /><br />By that time the Texas Panhandle belonged to the whites, and both those once free-roving beings, the free American Bison and the free American Indian, were long gone from the open ranges.<br /><br />The famous buffalo hunter and the big gun he used to blow an Indian off a horse at nearly a mile's distance became part of the lore of the frontier, a legend today perpetuated an ocean and more than a century away by the Lancashire Historical Breechloading Smallarms Association. The Association holds an annual Vintage Rifle Open Long Range Championship. Contesting shooters meet up to blaze away at a thousand yards with black powder cartridge rifles modeled after "Billy" Dixon's "Big 50". White people will never forget a powerful weapon. After all, what else have they got.<br /><br />Today the Indians have their casinos and their cultural memories. Their myths and stories remember a vanished way of life. The American Bison, retrieved from the brink of extinction -- the genetically compromised survivors selectively reintroduced to patches of the old grazing grounds, a few individual animals and small herds protected in conservation preserves, the majority destined for "regulated" commercial slaughter (including "kosher slaughter") -- are perhaps fortunate to remember nothing.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49172970610588638902011-09-23T05:45:31.702-07:002011-09-23T05:45:31.702-07:00The .50-90 Sharps black powder rifle cartridge was...The .50-90 Sharps black powder rifle cartridge was introduced to the weapons market in 1872 by Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company, with ballistics designed for big-game hunting. Specifically, the .50-90 cartridge was a buffalo hunting round; powerful enough to take down the continent's largest land animal in a single shot. The cartridge incorporated a heavy bullet and a large black powder load, producing extremely high muzzle energies. The bullet typically measured 13 mm. in diameter, weighed up to 36 g., and was fired at muzzle energy up to c. 2000 foot-pounds force. The impact of the blast from a "Big .50" was strong enough to topple an American Bison bull at full gallop.<br /><br />On 27 June 1874, at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls, a famous marksman named William "Billy" Dixon fired a legendary 1538-yard shot with a Sharps .50-90. <br /><br />Like many of the most accomplished professional buffalo killers of his day Dixon was a "Meti", or half-breed, of mixed European and Native American descent, a hired scout and professional "market hunter" for the railroads. A formidable person with the imposing bearing of one accustomed to a routine of brutal, often casual slaughter.<br /><br />When buffalo hunters followed the last of the great southern herds into the Texas Panhandle in 1874, Dixon, who had scouted Texas as far south as the Salt Fork of the Red River, became the leader and guide of an organized killing party. He conducted a group of twenty-eight men (and one woman) out onto the Texas Plains, where they set up an outpost called Adobe Walls. Dixon knew the country and so knew that roaming buffalo herds -- and therefore migratory groups of buffalo-hunting Southern Plains Indians -- were abundant. <br /><br />Seven years earlier the Treaty of Medicine Lodge had laid plans for two reservations in Southern Plains country, one for the Kiowa and Comanche, the other for the Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne. The treaty had nominally encouraged the tribes to engage in commercial market hunting, providing, along with basic necessities, a supply of rifles and ammunition, and license to continue to "hunt on any lands south of the Arkansas River so long as the buffalo may range thereon."<br /><br />But the food and housing provisions of the treaty proved hollow. Conditions on the reservations were miserable at best. They were in fact little more than prison camps.<br /><br />Professional buffalo killers like "Billy" Dixon construed the treaty in their own fashion, meanwhile: as license to penetrate Indian lands without governmental hindrance. They hunted the buffalo plains to exhaustion, with little more regard for the native human inhabitants of those plains, who had been dependent on the buffalo for their livelihood, than for the helpless prey.<br /><br />Indeed the actions of Dixon and his party were part of a larger strategic campaign in the summer of 1874 aimed at usurping the historic territories of the indigenous peoples of the Southern Plains -- the Kiowa, Comanche, Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. The U.S. Army was charged with the task of causing these peoples by force to do what they were understandably disinclined to do voluntarily, that is, to move out of the westward path of Empire, away from their former hunting grounds and onto reservations. The campaign would constitute a decisive victory for Manifest Destiny and an irrevocable loss of homelands for the native peoples, whose traditional nomadic way, following the roaming Bison herds which had sustained them, would be ended forever.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49508526138082435902011-09-23T05:43:29.393-07:002011-09-23T05:43:29.393-07:00Ed, Antonio, Marcia, we dwell together in sorrow b...Ed, Antonio, Marcia, we dwell together in sorrow before all this.<br /><br />Marcia reminds me of the critical efforts on the part of men like Scotty Phillip to save the Bison.<br /><br />Ed reminds me that many of the animals in the present herds of the High Plains are being "protected"... to become buffalo meat. <br /><br />Looking into the history in this area quickly becomes a looking-into the history of the White and Red man in America, each with distinct ways and uses.<br /><br />I turned up several stories of the still-hunting professionals, experts who were responsible for a large share of the slaughter.<br /><br />The following is the story of one of these "heroes" of the frontier.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-83518868847357182782011-09-23T04:09:27.126-07:002011-09-23T04:09:27.126-07:00and the destruction goes on unfortunatelly, it mus...and the destruction goes on unfortunatelly, it must be idiosincratic to the homo sapiens. just think about what NOW is happening to rain forests!António Errehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01504473746352900063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49515553002035051612011-09-22T14:07:13.454-07:002011-09-22T14:07:13.454-07:00here around here in Virginia not sure what is...here around here in Virginia not sure what is in Maryland a list of Buffalo Farms ...<br /><br />Buffalo Meat Processing Ranches not 1852 but 2011:<br /><br />http://www.eatbisonmeat.com/webapp/GetPage?pid=56<br /><br />I saw some buffalo hamburger up at the local "Gourmet" food store ... $12.49 per pound !<br /><br />heck<br /><br />can Armour and Swift's be far behind ?<br /><br />and imported PHONY buffalo meat from Asia<br /><br />just like our Atlantic Salmon now comes from a fish farm (a swimming pool) in Viet Nam !<br /><br />and the fu*&*$ng crap is colored with a dye to make the white salmon look PINK !Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-72595733633225737772011-09-22T13:56:30.577-07:002011-09-22T13:56:30.577-07:00Thankfully, there was a man - Scotty Philip - in S...Thankfully, there was a man - Scotty Philip - in South Dakota who made it his mission to save the buffalo after this terrible slaughtering. Many of the bison from his herd went to National and state parks after his death.Marciahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17150292834089323928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-3345994465879877982011-09-22T13:06:12.376-07:002011-09-22T13:06:12.376-07:00first cousin of the buffalo ... the cow/cattle.
he...first cousin of the buffalo ... the cow/cattle.<br />here is how it is done just about everywhere in the U.S.A. (thanks to Henry Ford's assembly-line and American Ingenuity !: :<br /><br />http://www.humanesociety.org/news/news/2008/01/undercover_investigation_013008.html<br /><br />most people think meat grows in little, sterile styrephone and is wrapped in see-through shrink-wrapped cellophane !<br /><br />and we wonder why we are in the age of run-away cancer ...Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-36897408807250708302011-09-22T09:56:33.255-07:002011-09-22T09:56:33.255-07:00Ed, That hike sounds fine. Next time you can carry...Ed, That hike sounds fine. Next time you can carry me on your back. Like a buffalo skin at Boystown.<br /><br /><br />Joseph, this history is hard to stomach -- presuming hopefully it's just history, yet fearing, from what we see around us, otherwise. The rising gorge, the rising sense of distaste, the awful realization that that DNA pool is a quicksand wallow we'll never escape from as a species, even as we bring other species down with us ... Amen to your utopian proposal that some of the lab geeks figure out how to turn off the gore switch. But homo necans, man the killer, may have locked the switch into an "on" position, at some point along the (d)evolutionary line.<br /><br />I remember living up in your neck of the woods and being scared to death by the great white (yet red of neck) hunters with web hats and rifle racks mounted on their four by fours. They'd drive up into the mountains after Broncos games and if there were no animals to shoot, then just blast away at old refrigerators, junked cars, etc. <br />Just to prove who's boss I guess. You'd have almost thought there was a war on. It made one fear to walk among those woods.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-76615211227796169842011-09-22T09:23:09.252-07:002011-09-22T09:23:09.252-07:00It's almost impossible to project oneself into...It's almost impossible to project oneself into the mentality of these craven butchers. (But that term is an insult to real butchers.) Is there a switch in the human brain, do you think? One that activates the lust old John Chivington articulated before the Sand Creek Massacre, that he "long[ed] to wade in gore"? DNA researchers would do well to shift their focus from curing baldness to finding that switching and disabling it....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89957115263852841442011-09-22T08:40:39.354-07:002011-09-22T08:40:39.354-07:00hey
that's "right on" :
...hey<br />that's "right on" :<br /> <br /> "the present is a bit hard to make out"<br /><br />actually, these daze, everything is a bit hard to "get a handle on"<br /><br />I am just now getting into what is now being called "contextual" as in poetry, art, etc<br /><br />have as yet not gotten much beyond the standard<br />dictionary definition of "context"<br /><br />I just went for a 2-mile walk first time I've left my "cave" in 37 years !<br /><br />same trail through this section of The Longbranch ...<br /><br />took my cane just in case I had to beat of a charging, pissed off White Buffalo... <br /><br />now?<br /><br />water, a nap, then.... into my own mind's lore's twists-&-turns, as :::<br /> <br /> ARS POETIC HEREd Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-72577594452399409782011-09-22T08:28:16.499-07:002011-09-22T08:28:16.499-07:00Vassilis, no sane person could respond otherwise t...Vassilis, no sane person could respond otherwise to this. Although one might equally say no sane person would shoot elk from a helicopter, or be numbered among the stunted legions of the tea party.<br /><br />Mr Hornaday was a professional zoologist who devoted a good bit of time and attention to field studies of the last Bison in their vanishing habitat, and a good deal of additional time and attention attempting to preserve "specimens" of what remained of the species. His long, eloquent, outraged monograph is terrible and wonderful in detail, terrible for what it tells, wonderful in that it reveals much truth. Of course no one wanted to hear such truths then, much as now.<br /><br />It may well be that the last hope for this continent ended at the moment the first white man set foot upon it.<br /><br /><br />Ed,<br /><br />The lore is rich and abundant though the contact with the present is a bit hard to make out. One strains one's ears and eyes. <br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/buffalo-hunter.html" rel="nofollow">The Buffalo Hunter</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-83529582922961285042011-09-22T06:23:49.255-07:002011-09-22T06:23:49.255-07:00see if y'all can find this film:
http://rapid...see if y'all can find this film:<br /><br />http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/top-stories/article_dc7fc704-fe76-51f0-a09e-ae934ddd7439.html<br /><br />(hope I clicked the right "copy" button):<br /><br />title is "Good Meat: How tThe Lakota Got Fat and Beau LeBeau Saved Himself"Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-59781431239521512822011-09-22T04:46:59.136-07:002011-09-22T04:46:59.136-07:00What a legacy those "hunter/ butchers" l...What a legacy those "hunter/ butchers" left us--devastatingly disgustful.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.com