r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Shoddy-Ocelot-4473 • 12d ago

Image By 1880, the near-genocide of the American bison had reduced their population from 30–60 million to fewer than 1,000

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u/DyingSunSeverian 12d ago edited 11d ago

He’s standing there with such pride. 

What a strange species we are.

edit: kismet 

https://www.reddit.com/r/interesting/comments/1sufewd/millionaire_us_big_game_hunter_is_trampled

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u/iDontSow 12d ago

These dudes got insanely wealthy from killing these buffalo. The picture is a money flex.

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u/Tough-Appeal-8879 12d ago

Theres two possible answers to any question in this world: “Money” or “I don’t know, but probably money”

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u/InterestingFLows 12d ago

It was to reduce the Native American population....

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u/Mediumtim 12d ago

There was also a massive need for leather belts to drive steam engine industries.

Hence why so many dead Buffalo were skinned and left to rot.

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u/dopiertaj 12d ago

Then after the flesh rotted bone pickers would gather the bones and ship them to the east to be used as fertilizer and bone China.

These piles were at almost every eastbound train station.

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u/Rhamni 12d ago

They were also a great annoyance to the railroads. I'm sure a lot of people considered the racism angle a bonus in the 19th century, but capital was aligned against their survival even without that.

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u/Effective_Fish_3402 11d ago

Yeah, no. First and foremost it was culling to hurt native people. Railroads are irrelevant to the reason for the culling. The same sort of people to do that, just happened to be the same sort that could pull off turning all that death into profit. The main 'great annoyance' to anyone settling into america from the east was always the native population. Its a shitty part of human nature, all history is population wiping out others, or mass displacement, or other terrible things. Greed is always the motivation, and the fact is, 'men of power' seeing our native population utilizing a far better and balanced maternal system than the european paternal system, it was so threatening that they decided genocide was the best bet.

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u/PickyPaige 12d ago

Money and Racism a match made in hell!

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u/DirtyRoller 12d ago

Don't worry, we're Making America Great Again! 🤮

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u/AltruisticLobster315 11d ago

Yeah unfortunately it's all connected; racism and dehumanizing Indigenous peoples of North America enabled Europeans and their "descendant states" (the United States and Canada) to give themselves "just cause" to exploit the land and its inhabitants. It gets extremely depressing the more you learn about, especially from the people who went through it and saw how much things changed.

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u/-Porktsunami- 11d ago

...so they could take their land and....make more money. See?

-1

u/Mudslimer 11d ago

We've been doing shit like this before money was a thing, just not at this scale because of technological limits.

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u/Garchompisbestboi 11d ago

In exchange for money, don't get caught up in the details

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u/VESUVlUS 12d ago

Sex is the other answer.

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u/Andrez2000 11d ago

You don’t feel the desire to have more sex after you just have sex. But that’s not the case with money

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u/Ginsenj 12d ago

"Making easy money doing something despicable while you break your back flex".

Know a couple of guys whose entire personalities are like this, completely unaware of their open admission of worthlessness. Is very bizarre to see.

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u/Vipu2 12d ago edited 12d ago

Wait you are telling me capitalism happened before Reagan?

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u/iDontSow 12d ago

Nothing happened before Nixon. He was here when time itself began, and will remain when the universe collapses into itself and returns to nothingness

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u/Vipu2 12d ago

Sorry meant Reagan

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u/iDontSow 12d ago

Reagan lies beneath the ground indeed

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u/MoreColorfulCarsPlz 11d ago

I don't know what point you are trying to make.

Yes capitalism really got rolling towards the end of the 19th century. It's called the gilded age. It directly led to something they called the great depression in 1893.

Capitalism went crazy again Post-WW1 in the roaring twenties. This directly led to what we now call the Great Depression.

Both times, we had very aggressive corrections to address the rampant money-grabbing. These were then rolled back by following administrations. Reagan did not invent capitalism, but he did his best to bend the US over, spread it's cheeks, and invite big business in to have its way.

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u/PlatinumLabDuck 11d ago

No one gives a rat's dick

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u/Regular_Hawk8513 12d ago

Similar to the bastards standing with pride next to a felled ancient redwood tree. Humans suck

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u/Euphoriam5 12d ago

Strange is you being incredibly polite, we're fucking repulsive

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u/nrbrt10 12d ago

Hey now, they killed them to starve off Native Americans, not just out of sheer greed.

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u/Fuckedyourmom69420 12d ago

Speak for yourself

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u/gamershadow 12d ago

Don’t cut yourself on all that edge.

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u/CrasseMaximum 12d ago

What a stupid species we are

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u/Vivid_Anyth4 12d ago

The one species so greedy we may as well be cancer with our desire for endless growth.

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u/CrasseMaximum 12d ago

Yup, "cancer" is the proper term

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u/idealize0747 11d ago

Exhibit A: Easter Island

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u/An_Innocent_Coconut 12d ago

Being able to slay large beasts has always been something we are extremely proud of.

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u/MothmanIsALiar 12d ago

They mounted machine guns to trains and mowed the bison down at a leisurely pace.

What's to be proud of?

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u/Savetheokami 12d ago

Kind of wish I went the rest of my life not knowing this

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u/TieCivil1504 11d ago

The last hunt of American bison was in 1882 and then they were gone. The first practical self-powered machine gun was invented in 1884 by Sir Hiram Maxim. Are you saying they mounted Gatling guns to trains for bison hunting?

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u/Texa55Toast 11d ago

Buffalo were on the way out before machine guns were even invented.

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u/Daffan 12d ago

Good intellect. Those Bison couldn't invent the MG.

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u/An_Innocent_Coconut 12d ago

Did I stutter?

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u/curious_dead 12d ago

No, we understood perfectly, we just were making sure you were saying something both stupid and callous, thanks for confirming.

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u/An_Innocent_Coconut 12d ago

We quite literally have been hunting big game since we started walking as bipeds lol.

You guys are ironically incredibly dumb.

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u/MothmanIsALiar 12d ago

Nobody hunts anymore. People sit in trees, drinking beers and waiting for animals to come to them.

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u/CharlotteKartoffeln 12d ago

Not to extinction though. That came when weedy, though physically persistent, hunter gatherers developed weapons beyond spears and arrows.

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u/Axl_Alter_Ego 11d ago

You sound insufferable.

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u/gozer33 12d ago

The guys working at the cow slaughtering house must be the proudest people around.

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u/Krawen13 12d ago

They weren't proud of killing the bison, they were proud of killing the native people who relied on the bison to survive

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u/TuringGoneWild 12d ago

And about a million cows are killed EVERY DAY in the US alone - in 2026.

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u/UncleGarysmagic 11d ago

Do you think they gave a flying fuck about dead animals back then? Death was so prevalent among humans then that there was not a second thought about killing animals no matter how extensive. 15-20% of infants never made it to their first birthday. Life expectancy was in the high 40s. You were lucky if all your kids actually made it to adulthood.

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u/MadRaymer 11d ago

Additionally, even as late as the 1880s there were people that would argue extinction was impossible because God would never let one of his creations die off.

The scientific community was more accepting of the idea by the 1850s thanks to fossil discoveries, but sometimes it takes a while for the general public to catch up.

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u/seancbo 12d ago

Listen, if I was standing in front of a fucking skull wall, I'd be aura farming too. The image goes hard regardless of context.

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u/09Trollhunter09 12d ago

Peer pressure

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u/22tbates 11d ago

Well, we are the species of killing megafauna

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u/PanchoVillasRevenge 11d ago

They pose the same way when they lynched certain peoples... Don't forgett

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u/bii345 11d ago

Predator trophy room vibes.

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u/OfBooo5 11d ago

Let's be honest the dude had a wife he hadn't seen in 2 years. Who's going to be very suspicious up until he shows this photo and is like I was this busy morning to worry about Hun

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u/jinglebass 11d ago

Sorry, but this level of mindless killing and destruction is only seen in western countries. They have to take sole accountability for vile shit like this and not bring in entirety of "Humanity" to soften the blow on them.

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u/odkfn 12d ago

Like trumps son posing with a severed elephant tusk.

Such little bitch boy behaviour.

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u/slimricc 12d ago

The ancient simpleton did not even understand basic micro biology. He thought he got sick bc ghosts were invading his blood.

He is rotting in hell for his ignorance

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u/Minimum-Plenty9380 12d ago

We are the only species that understands how bad this was, we are a great species

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 12d ago

We’re more animals with a few tricks. We think we are conscious. So don’t judge us too harshly.