I did not know how organized the slaughter of these incredible beasts was. Thank you for researching and sharing this horrific bit of our history. It is impossible to imagine their vast numbers, and also impossible to imagine a landscape covered with their bones.
I'm pleased that you found it informative, Melinda.
I was surprised by the number of people who made full-time jobs of killing them; an estimated 8-10 thousand people at the same time! Reading the old reports and letters, the horror of it was even worse than in my short summary. We should never have allowed the buffalo "hunters" to become popular heroes. We also should teach our young about how it really happened and not just the sanitized movie version.
Most of the history we are taught is the sanitized version, isn't it? Truth is such a fragile thing. Thanks for putting this out there. Resteemed and tip!
Wow, thanks, Melinda! A valued gesture these days!
And yes, I think most everything we are taught goes through a set of filters before we get the acceptable version, and even that will change as the political and cultural winds shift direction. Some editing is needed for brevity, but most editing is to obscure the parts we "don't need to know" for political reasons. The older I get, the more convinced I am that someone has decided that the less we know about the true path we took to get to where we are as a culture, the easier we are to manage by those who think they know what is best for us.
That is another reason that old books give a more valid viewpoint of an event than the version produced by learned pundits later on.
You are very wise and of course I agree with you completely! When you see how the information about last week, or last month or last year gets manipulated it's easier to understand how the information from 100 or 500 years ago has been altered.
It takes a person with a weak, insecure mind to think that altering historical events to fit the political environment of today is a good thing to do. Facts are facts, and they should not be erased and replaced with "what they really meant was..."
If you look at the language used by educates people in the mid-1800's, their vocabulary was very large and their phrasing far more sophisticated than the short sentences filled with little words we see now. I f people paid that much attention to their writing, I'm certain they wrote exactly what they meant to write, so why not believe that they knew what they were doing?
Too many groups of people think Old = IGNORANT. Old ideas, old books, old writings, old stories: none can be relied on because...what could they know we sophisticates of today do not know?
A lot, probably.
A lot, indeed! We have become such an ignorant society. I would worry that we are a lost cause, except that I know too many brilliant young people who are overflowing with ideas. I think they will save the world!
I wish I shared your optimism. Most young people with ideas are not running businesses that are making the bad decisions or have a grasp of how complicated the mess we have created is, or how much it will cost economically and socially to correct the accumulated mistakes of the past.
In any case, I don't think we have the time left to correct things. Things are reaching peak "bad"day-by-day.
I believe the future will look far different than any of us old folks can even imagine. I'm still clinging to hope.
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