Volume 47, Number 7 · April 27, 2000
Goodbye to the Bison
By William H. McNeill
The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920
by Andrew C. Isenberg
Cambridge University Press, 206 pp., $24.95
As Professor Isenberg tells us, the final destruction of free-ranging herds of bison on the American Great Plains occurred in the 1870s and was the work of a handful of white men interested only in stripping hides from dead buffalo carcasses and shipping them off for sale in the East. But why was urban America eager to pay good money for millions of buffalo hides when cattle hides were readily available close at hand? The answer is simple. Before the invention of rubberized belting for use in factories, industrializing America required leather belts to connect steam engines with all the new machines that were turning out manufactured goods in unprecedented quantity. Buffalo hides, being larger and thicker than cow hides, could be made into stronger and more durable drive belts for America's burgeoning factories.
Review, 3035 words
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