Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
About this object
While buffalo hunting was a commonly seen subject in 19th century art, Army General and artist Seth Eastman’s signature attention to detail sets this work apart.
On this date, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 921, a bill “to prevent the useless slaughter of buffaloes within the Territories of the United States.” (Although the House used the term buffalo, the animals are bison.) Sponsored by Greenbury Lafayette Fort of Illinois, the chairman of the House Committee on Territories, the legislation sought to protect dwindling herds of bison west of the Mississippi River by outlawing the killing of female bison and by levying expensive fines on anyone who killed “any greater number of male buffaloes than needed for food by such person.” An earlier but unsuccessful bill introduced by Arizona Delegate Richard Cunningham McCormick in 1871 had sought similar protections for bison on public land. Fort’s 1874 legislation, which exempted American Indians who relied on the herds to feed and provision their communities, came amid a period of reckless butchery on the Great Plains. Following the Civil War, commercial hunters indiscriminately killed bison for their hides, their tongues (which were considered delicacies), and for sport. “The object of this bill is to prevent the early extermination of these noble herds from the plains,” Fort said during debate on March 10. Opponents such as Omar Dwight Conger of Michigan—who called the measure “utterly worthless”—believed Congress could do little to prevent the bison from going extinct given how quickly settlers populated the trans-Mississippi West. Conger’s argument was condemned during debate, as was the idea held by some federal and military officials that U.S. troops could force American Indian nations onto reservations if migratory bison were hunted into extinction. For other Members, however, the scope of the legislation was too narrow. “If there is any objection to this bill, it is that it does not go far enough in preventing the slaughter of the animal,” John Adam Kasson of Iowa said. In all, 132 Members voted for the bill; the House did not count the votes against. Although the bill passed the Senate a few months later, President Ulysses S. Grant did not sign it, and instead used a pocket veto after Congress adjourned for the summer. Without federal protection, the once massive herds were decimated. Fifteen million bison were believed to have grazed on America’s grasslands in the 1860s. By the final decade of the nineteenth century, only around 1000 remained.
