On 6/14/21 10:42 AM, Tristan Sloughter wrote:
I didn't do more than skim and search around in GW's article and found
it really odd. He has a couple quotes from 2 congressmen and a Major
General to downplay the role of the government in slaughtering buffalo
to deprive Native Americans of food, housing, clothes and trade. But
none of that changed the policy, it was simply that not EVERYONE
agreed with it, but that doesn't change anything about how many
buffalo were killed...
Not to mention he seems to be arguing only against the claim that it
was white commercial hunters who caused the decline of the buffalo.
But who argues this? I'm pretty sure even the Chicago Natural History
museum exhibit lays blame on the government and not simply white
settlers. So his claim that "it is widely assumed that white
commercial hunters caused the demise of the West’s bison herds" is not
the "mainstream" assumption. Simply a strawman for him to go after?
I have a longish article answering Wuerthner on Wednesday's
CounterPunch. Here's a preview:
There’s one sentence in Wuerthner’s article that cries out for
expansion, however. He wrote:
Tribal people like the Blackfeet, Crow and other plains tribes
considered beaver trapping beneath their dignity. They were bison
hunters, and hunting bison is what they did not only for their
subsistence but also for trade to obtain everything from pretty cloth to
rifles.
What does it mean to exchange buffalo hides for manufactured goods? It
simply means that the Indians used their labor (riding horses and firing
rifles) to produce commodities that could be exchanged for goods
manufactured in the USA or England that produced super-profits for the
capitalists. For example, it took five buffalo hides to generate the
money to buy a gallon of whiskey. The whiskey cost $16, while those
hides produced about a hundred dollars for the exporter. Not bad.
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