I have a question that I would like to put before this fine and august group. It is about questioning history.

I have seen many people try and rewrite history from parents who I partied with as a teenager and who now proclaim to children and the world that they never, ever partied until it was legal to neo-Nazis who claim that the German extermination of the Jews never happened. I know both rewrites are wrong because I partied with those parents when I was a teenager and some of them even drank the bong water. I know about the concentration camps because I grew up with a few old people in the neighborhood who still had tattoos on their wrists and my mother visited Buchenwald back in the 80s.

There is another side too. I was taught through 12 years of grade school and high school that Plymouth Colony was the first English/European settlement in what is now the United States and that they came here for freedom of religion. Imagine my chagrin when I learn in college history that Jamestown was the first colony and that they had been exporting tobacco for nearly thirty years before the pilgrims ever landed at Plymouth. I also learned at college that the students and faculty in women’s studies called history, his story. Everyone had a critique of history whether it be Marxist, Feminist, Conservative, Naturalist, or what ever.

So one question is, do we have a responsibility to embrace the history that is taught? Many of us use that history to help us understand our national character. Does it matter that it might not be entirely true? Another question might be, should we challenge the historical record, chase it into the corner, and see if we might squeeze a little more light of day from it?

Here is a scenario:


Back in the early 1990s, a Canadian mathematician was studying the destruction of the North American bison herd by commercial buffalo hunters. He read that in 1873 the U.S. Army sent out a survey team to collect data about the numerical size and range of the buffalo herd east of the Rocky Mountains. If memory serves me correctly, he claimed that the survey team estimated the herd to be not less than 50,000,000 animals to no more than 75,000,000 animals. Then in 1875 that same U.S. Army survey team retraced their route and tried to do a second survey. The difference is that in 1875, the survey team could not find one single living bison.

The mathematician did more research and found that even though the makes of rifles were several as well as cartridge calibers, the most common rifle was a Sharps falling block and the most common cartridge was the 45-70. The standard size projectile was 500 grains. He goes on to state that according to the historical record available to him there were not more than 1000 commercial hunters operating at any given time. Each hunter had a crew of skinners, packers, and camp personnel. If the buffalo were wiped out by the commercial hunters, it was these numbers that had to do the job.


He gets out his little abacus and calculates that 70 grains of black powder times 50,000,000 buffalo equals 3,500,000,000 grains of black powder which equals 500,000 pounds. 75,000,000 buffalo would equal 750,000 pounds of black powder. 50,000,000 buffalo would equal 3,571,428.6 pounds of lead. 75,000,000 buffalo would equal 5,357,142.9 pounds of lead. The number of primers equals the number of buffalo. The key to these numbers is that each shot must find its target and each shot must kill its target or those numbers increase.

The mathematician points out that since the herd was nomadic the supply chain must continually shift, expand, and contract in order to provide the ammunition and other required supplies to meet the needs of the hunters. While also hauling supplies to the hunters and skins back to market, the hides had to be removed, scraped, and salted. Camp chores needed to be done and ammunition had to be reloaded. All this had to be done in two years or less.

The mathematician voiced his skepticism about whether the historical picture was accurate. Such an undertaking he claimed would be an achievement equal to digging the Erie Canal or building the transcontinental railroad. It was possible he claimed but he doubted if it was plausible. He then goes on to claim that the first cattle drive out of Texas heading north to the railroad happened about this time and that the buyers recorded that many of the animals had hoof and mouth disease, a disease that is fatal for buffalo. That trail went right through the heart of buffalo territory.

I don’t think the man was ever taken seriously in historical circles. I don’t know if it was because history was not his discipline, his facts were skewed, or perhaps he challenged the status quo of accepted/published history. I found it an interesting proposition and have stored the idea in my mind as a possibility. He is re-writing history with such an article. Should he have kept it to himself and not challenged historical notions or was he right to put it out there and let the world measure the idea?

What is your take?

We should always strive to know the truth, but history being written by the victors, tends to be distored or seen through ideology colored glasses.

The buffalo lasted until about 1884. Teddy Roosevelt killed what was probably the last wild buffalo in the Dakota Territories in 1883. The hunters went out next season and went broke because there were no buffalo to kill. All that remained were a single privately owned herd and the Canadian herd. I mention this because it did take a decade not the three years of the OP's reading.

punkinlobber wrote:I have a question that I would like to put before this fine and august group. It is about questioning history.
...
I don’t think the man was ever taken seriously in historical circles. I don’t know if it was because history was not his discipline, his facts were skewed, or perhaps he challenged the status quo of accepted/published history. I found it an interesting proposition and have stored the idea in my mind as a possibility. He is re-writing history with such an article. Should he have kept it to himself and not challenged historical notions or was he right to put it out there and let the world measure the idea?

What is your take?

Ever seen that photo of the heaps of dead buff? That certainly lent authenticity to the claim.

The anthrax theory is interesting, though, and credible.

Being in the army and receiving reports back I can completely understand the made up numbers.

Many of the buffalo herds were simply driven off cliffs and much of the lead was recovered and reused. The army's interest in buffalo hunting was not to make coats. It was an attempt to commit genocide of those tribes whose existence depended on the herds. It was viewed as a cost effective method.

I was a History major in college. I remember one of my teachers making the point that there is no such thing as unbiased history. Seems that every writer writes from a point of view. I can forgive the tendency; but when established facts are distorted or ignored and the writing takes on a decidedly political slant then I don't put much stock in that writing. Napoleon is alleged to have said "History is just the lie we all agree on".

Always check your assumptions

The comments about the Army trying to subdue the tribe's rings true to me, as does the the hoof and mouth desease...

Also surveys of animals can be terribly wrong, I live in the Northwest, and right now there is a push to put Smelt (a small fish similar to bait fish) in a protected status. At certain days of the week you can go to the beach and they are literally washing up on shore, other times you can't catch one to save you life, all in the same place. It all comes down to timing, and if you don't see a Buffalo for the month you survey you can't say they are gone, just not in the area you are looking.

Certainly the Buffalo were hunted out.

JoelB wrote:Many of the buffalo herds were simply driven off cliffs and much of the lead was recovered and reused. The army's interest in buffalo hunting was not to make coats. It was an attempt to commit genocide of those tribes whose existence depended on the herds. It was viewed as a cost effective method.

This is the history that I was indoctrinated to...and measles and small pox infected blankets being handed out to the aboriginal tribes...

History is written by the victors...at least until it conflicts with reality.

The passenger pigeon was one of the, if not the, most abundant land animals in the world. Population estimates run from 3-5 billion animals at their peak in the 19th century. And yet, we managed to wipe them out in fairly short order (relatively speaking).

I have a MA in History; I can assure you that one will never know the full story about anything (which keeps Historians in business). I am a statistician (broadly speaking) by trade; and I can assure you that numbers are never black and white and can't answer everything (which keeps me in business).

Remember that there is also a cumulative effect when you aggressively hunt a species. Reduced birth rate, increased stress and changes to behavior in general. Market hunting of bison was a very big domino of a string of dominoes.

This is why you obtain news/history from multiple sources, including those with opposing interpretations, and make up your own mind.

Just a sample of how distorted history can become:
Suetonious was a miserable little Greek scribbler of scandalous rumors coming out of the Imperial Household of the Caesars of the early Roman Empire. Since his books were about the only literature to survive the dark Ages, modern historians and writers of fiction have taken his word as gospel about the early Roman emperors.
To put it in a contemporary light: imagine a great catastrophe overtakes our civilization in 300 years. Most of our literature is wiped out. The only thing that survives about the Obama presidency is a Glenn Beck book.
You get the picture.

Considering that there is no unbiased history, How about a book that was written way after everyone had been dead for a long long time.

The Bible.