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Explanation:
When William Clark and Meriwether Lewis’ famous expedition reached the Great Plains in 1806, the crew couldn’t believe their eyes. There, ranging across the prairies in groups that moved up to 30 miles per hour, were gigantic herds of buffalo so large they waylaid the travelers for hours on end. “The moving multitude…darkened the whole plains,” they wrote.
Seventy years later, buffalo—and the Native American tribes the explorers encountered—would be almost eliminated on the Great Plains thanks to another revered American, William Tecumseh Sherman.
The general is best known for his for his bloody march across Georgia, stealing livestock and intimidating civilians in one of the most famous campaigns of the Civil War. But after the war, he didn’t retire. Instead, he took his scorched-earth tactics to another war—one against Native Americans. Sherman’s leadership led not just to the extermination and relocation of thousands of indigenous people, but the annihilation of nearly all of the United States’ wild buffalo.
Major General William Tecumseh Sherman taken in 1864, in the trench before Sherman's March across Georgia.
The Civil War might not seem related to the fate of buffalo or Native Americans, but in reality they were closely intertwined. Almost as soon as the Civil War ended, the United States turned its attention westward. A country that couldn’t agree on slavery rallied around the idea that American should push west.
There was just one problem: The land was already settled by Native Americans, many of whom put up armed resistance to American incursions. “Northerners and Southerners agreed on little at the time except that the Army should pacify Western tribes,” write historians Boyd Cothran and Ari Kelman.
In the eyes of the government and the public, there was one man perfectly suited for the job: Sherman. Now the most senior member of the U.S. Army, Sherman was known for using psychological warfare to bring the South to its knees. By sending Sherman west, officials hoped, the United States could gain even more land and secure space for an ambitious westward expansion.
Buffalo were a critical part of that plan. Sherman’s job was to use the U.S. Army to protect the transcontinental railroad and secure mining interests in territory traditionally owned and settled by Native Americans. The plan was to force Native Americans onto reservations, seize their land and protect the settlers who moved there. In a series of campaigns now known as the western Indian Wars, the military clashed with tribes intent on protecting their lands and their way of life.
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