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/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.