Roadkill been involved????? If you know you will understand….
I'm sure everyone has seen this, but always makes me laugh.
I used to bring in wood for grandma's.
Some good metal there....just get out the torch.
There were about 3x more than this map shows and the lines were different. There was a herd of 500 that roamed from Red River county in Texas up to Kiamichi until the early 1880s. The entire herd was wiped out North of Bonham around then. The Red River bottom had stray herds up until 1900. Several large ranches in and around Caprock Canyon had from 10-40 head and there were lots of 2-4 roamer groups all the way up into Utah. Same goes for parts of Montana and North Dakota. There are still stray small herds roaming around to this day.
Only two herds in the US have no maternal cattle genes.
One interesting fact is that many of the fords across the rivers in Texas and Oklahoma are old buffalo crossings.
Another is that the Commanche were a trading empire and their main exports were buffalo products (leather and jerky) and horses. They were the ones to build the market and demand for Buffalo robes and leather and were the primary driver for the herds' destruction in Texas and Oklahoma. They sold stuff to buy guns and powder - so killing off the Buffalo, denying access to hunting grounds, interdicting the markets, bringing in competitors which drove down prices, and burning their villages - dried up their funds.
The area between Dallas and Caddo Lake was a DMZ between the Cherokee/Caddo and the Comanches. It had little surface water in the Summer and was very hard to cross when wet or dry so it became a wildlife park of sorts. It had Elk, Wolves and Jaguars up until the 1880s. The area was also found to grow cotton very very well and so it got settled fast after the Civil War and the Railroad came and that ended it.
One other fact is that eared cattle became very numerous across Texas from Waco south. Up until the early 1900s just about any good kid could make a good living rousing them up and driving them to market.
A neighbor lost his wife and kids in a crash like this. There was a head on in front of her and she diverged into the right shoulder and over corrected. Oncoming cement truck behind the pileup hit his brakes to stop. She overcorrected again presenting her driver's side - he broadsided her. Had she just gone into the field to her right she'd been fine.
The truck had just completed brake maintenance and the driver had left 100 yards between him and the car that started the pileup. A few feet difference and she'd have missed him.
Horrible crash site.
I am likely remembering this wrong.....a while ago I did a dive into the "US and Indian wars". There is a really good book on the Comanches. It is billed as a Quanaha Parker book but it is really a over view of the Comanche going back to the first Spanish contacts. Earth is weeping and bury my heart at wounded knee are also quite good.
I want to say Sherman, yes that Sherman said basically if killing all the buffalo will get rid of the indians what are we waiting for. That had a big thing to do with it. The trains had another thing to do with it. Trains killed bunches.
The indian even with gunpowder never really had the ability to kill the masses of buffalo that the whites did. Gunpowder, rifles and lead are hard to come by. The books talk of digging lead out of bodies and trees to be re used. They just did not have it. When the US troopers found him in the Palo Duro canyon one thing they did is put them to foot. They (troopers) had learned that the indians would grab their horses during the night no matter how well protected, so they just started killing the horses, several thousand in one sitting. I can't even get my head around that.
I think it would be safe to say the .gov had a great deal to do with the buffalo, the other things you talked about yea, happened a little but nothing like the US army did to them. One of the books talks about Geronimo getting permission to leave the Res and do a buffalo hunt. They saw from the time they left the Res till they got to Mexico nothing but sun bleached bones. It was then he knew his way of life was over.
They both lived at the same time, Parker and Geronimo, and did not like eachother too much.
Those couple books are well worth the read if you are interested in the subject.
The Last Campaign is on my short list. Sherman and geronimo. I think it will be quite good.
Like the line from the TV show, the whites did not defeat them, they domesticated them.
No, don’t take a torch to it, that’s an early cherry picker before the incorporated hydraulics. The upright shaft with the turn wheel on is threaded into the upper anchor. Turning the wheel, raises and lowers lift arm. Hadn’t seen one of those in years. Very reliable if used with common sense and not overloaded. Would love to have it!
NO Godzilla.
Good idea if you are in a tourism slump.
A government agency has officially recognized the existence of Bigfoot. Apply for your study grant now.
I shoot .40S&W, and use Glock pistols to do it...doing my part to be happy while making the haters miserable.
