“a dead bison is an indian gone”

Colonel Dodge

A long and career in United States Army   Richard Irving Dodge (May 19, 1827 – June 16, 1895) was a colonel in the United States Army. Dodge was born in North Carolina and died after a long and successful career in the U.S. Army. He began as a cadet in 1844 and retired as a Colonel May 19, 1891. Dodge was Aide-De-Camp to General William Tecumseh Sherman from 1881–1882. In the second publishing of his memoirs General Sherman wrote, “… the vacancy made by Colonel McCook was filled by Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Irving Dodge, Twenty-third Infantry then serving at a cantonment on the Upper … Read more

1875

<< Previous  Next>> The Decline of the Buffalo.  Chicago Daily Tribune Chicago , Illinois Jan 2 1875  BUFFALO ROCK This was formally a part of the main north bluff, from which it became detached during some great natural convulsion, perhaps in the Glacial or Draft epoch. The rock is St. Peter’s Sandstone, overlaid with a thin bed of good coal, and above the usual Drift series. It’s surface covers some 80 acres. The canal and the railroad run through the deep natural cut between it and the main bluff. It is a prominent landmark, and is interesting as being the … Read more

Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo

THE FRONTIER ARMY AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BUFFALO: 1865-1883 DAVID D . SMITS (control the natives) SCHOLARS OF WESTERN AMERICAN HISTORY have long recognized the post-Civil War frontier army’s complicity in the near-extermination of the buffalo. Historian Richard White represents the scholarly consensus in stating that “various military commanders encouraged the slaughter of bison” by white hide hunters in order to cut the heart from the Plains Indians’ economy. Some scholars implicate the army’s high command more directly in the annihilation. Retired Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, for instance, claimed that Generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan viewed the eradication of the … Read more