Shuffle off to Buffalo

I had to vote "Other".

So far I have only one story involving a Buffalo hunt. I was to get three oldest brothers, a Wuxia warrior, a Trekboer, and a rabbi, away from a farm where the action was to occur.

Only have a couple references to buffalo in my novel. One of them is a place - Buffalo Jump where the Native Americans drove the buffalo off a cliff. So it's an historic reference only. Puma

I said shoot it for food and clothes. I'm just not sure if there's a typical response to this situation. I could see a character in a western doing any of the choices depending on his personality.

Okay, if you mean a cowboy from the old west who has a shaky moral center and maybe doesn't like indians or any minority, they would probably shoot it for sport. While I wouldn't like this person for their values, I could like their character and this would reveal a part of his personality.

Being influenced by today's morals and politically correct standards, I doubt any of us can truly say what the majority of common folks of the frontier felt about the condition of the Buffalo.
We have letters and reports of what "some" thought.
How many of the current readers of this board can truly say, from first hand experience, what the common citizen of the U.S. believed about the confinement of American Japanese here in the States?

Social Morals, they do change with each new generation, and it appears to me each generation feels the need to judge their ancestors, based on what they think they know, through the five stages ~~ Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

Good post, Jay. I especially like your five stages of evaluating our ancestors.

You mentioned the Japanese during WWII; there were also similar conditions for German Americans. One of the gals who used to frequent the history boards put together a very good novel about them and the war.

There's a lot we don't know, or don't know very well. I think your signature says it all. Puma

Dave, I agree. I was just kind of generalizing it but didn't know you were looking for with the buffalo hunters. That, I know very little about. Anyway, in commenting partially to both Dave's and Jay's posts, morally ambiguous characters are usually very interesting. Some writers, though seem to inject today's morals into historical stories. While I am sure that some folks were going against the social norms of the day, I don't think it was as common as some writers/movie directors would like us to believe.

Like most entrepeneurs today, the buffalo hunters in the old west probably never thought about causing the extinction of these animals (at least I think they are. Correct me if I'm wrong.) Back to the original question, I could see the possibility of a westerner killing for food, clothes, and sport.

There is certainly a parallel today with poaching. I live in an area where hunters will cut a head off of a deer just for the antlers without considering the effects of their action.

Dave, I also believe the Manifest Destiny viewpoint made Americans feel entitled and still does.

In reading the below link, I recall having a similar feeling in late night drag-racing down main street in the mid 1950's... I had a '41 Chevy, club coupe with an souped-up Olds 98 engine. Gave it to my kid brother when I enlisted.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/buffalo.htm
I think the railroads did more to eliminate the Buffalo herds than the individual hunters. I've read many old communications between offices of the AT&SF Ry. Co. where special "hunters trains" were encouraged.

I chose "ignore it" because so far my stories haven't even involved bison.And though myself character doesn't have questionable moral character, at this point I'm not sure what he thinks of bison hunts and extinction.

I don't think anyone back then thought in terms of ecology and preserving wild life. I don't think anyone even considered Mankind's effect on the environment. I mean, even today there are whole groups that don't think we effect the environment.

If it is the professional hunter you have in mind, then some of the choices in the poll are not likely to even be a consideration.

Dave, I did answer the poll with regards to my own protagonist, but your number 8 post sort of makes it sound like you had the professional hunter in mind as an unvoiced condition of the poll. bkendall I think got the same impression. Glad you clarified things.

Turn the question a bit - how would an early 20th century non-farmer have viewed his neighbors cows that got out and tramped down the vegetable garden? How do current farmers (and residents) view deer that eat up crops and decorative yard plantings? How do we view that pack of T-Bone steaks in the grocery? How do some moderns hunt deer, elk, and other "game" (I'm thinking of the deer drives we have around here.)? I don't think some attitudes have changed too much.

As far as how pioneers viewed the vastness and dangers of the wilderness, I think people were more matter of fact back in those days (and days not so long gone by). We're intimidated because we haven't experienced many hardships - look at all the media hype when there's a major snowstorm, power outage, threat of tornadoes. People back in those days took things as they came - hazards were part of life and I honestly don't think too many families expected all their offspring to live to adulthood. One of my ancestors kept a journal on the trip from eastern Pennsylvania to Ohio back in 1804. There are matter of fact entries that Mister so and so died, someone's son fell over the side of the wagon and was run over and was buried beside the trail and the wagon train kept going. No time for the families to grieve because they had to get to their new homes in time to erect shelters before the winter and try to raise a few crops. Think about the women who gave birth on the trips and were out walking beside the wagons immediately after - there wasn't room for passengers. The hardships were an expected part of life - but someone in each of the families (and maybe all of them) had decided that their lives would be improved in the new location so the risks and hardships were worth it.

By the way, in my novel I do have two characters seeing the west for the first time and each of them perceives it differently - one as an uninhabitable waste and the other as a place of grandeur. Puma

Personal events, yes, and recollections. I traveled a fair amount in the west (and all over this country and Canada) before the days of the super highways. The super highways leave no impressions, but the roads in my early traveling days did - the road up the Shoshone Canyon into Yellowstone with the sign "Towing Service to the Top", boiling over going over Teton Pass, the sand reclaiming the road going across Mono Lakes, meeting logging trucks on Highway 1 in California, driving towards an inky black maelstrom in Kansas, sliding off the road somewhere far up in Alberta, having wind tear a campground apart in North Dakota, camping out not far from the Montana/Wyoming/Idaho line the night of the Hebgen Lake Quake, breaking the arches in both feet coming down off a mesa through an arroyo in New Mexico. My experiences were no where like the pioneers, but I feel I am much richer for having experienced a taste of adversity and that those experiences help me into a pioneer adventurer / settler mindset. If you've never crossed a cattle grate, how do you even know things like that existed?

I really have to wonder if I would have been bored crossing the prairie at a snail's pace. I like to think not, but, who knows. Puma