It has always been my understanding that the near extermination of the American buffalo never had to do with over hunting. Every bit of industry during that era was centered around westward expansion. The biggest deterrent to expansion was the presence of American Indians (literally in the form of attack or sabotage of the transcontinental railroad construction, or psychological discouragement of settlers).

There’s no delicate way to put it: exterminating buffalo was the safest, most cost-effective way to mitigate the American Indian threat against westward expansion. Since American Indian tribes weren’t agriculturally equipped to sustain themselves, especially through winters, reduction of buffalo along the overland expansion routes practically guaranteed the reduction of attacks against settlers and railroad workers.

Hiring people to shoot buffalo was orders of magnitude easier and cheaper (and safer) than hiring and maintaining an army to fight Indians.

Plus a Buffalo heards natural response to threat is either to run, or form a tight circle (you could say _that_ adaptation never counted on the invention of gunpowder).

All that is to say, extinction of the buffalo was not the consequence of insatiable bloodlust for killing animals, as much as it was an objective in order to achieve unencumbered expansion and sustain the economic machine that was fueling it.

As another point of reference, the last Comanche band surrendered and moved onto the reservations in 1875.

This is a major section of the documentary.