A Photograph That Shook History
In the late 19th century, a haunting photograph captured two men in bowler hats standing atop a towering pile of bison skulls. The stark image, taken at the Michigan Carbon Works in Detroit, showed thousands of bones stacked in rows. While often viewed as evidence of overhunting, historians reveal it tells a deeper story of deliberate extermination.
Starving Out Nations
For centuries, Native American nations relied on bison for food, clothing, shelter, and tools. Indigenous hunters killed fewer than 100,000 animals a year, barely affecting the estimated 30–60 million roaming the plains. But in the mid-1800s, U.S. military officers saw the destruction of bison as a strategy to weaken tribes and push them onto reservations.
General Philip Sheridan encouraged hunters to slaughter herds, describing the animals as the “Indians’ commissary.” Lieutenant Colonel Richard Dodge was blunt: “Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone.”
Industrial Profits from Bones
The Michigan Carbon Works processed the bones into charcoal for the sugar industry, fertilizer, and glue. What was once the backbone of Native survival became raw material for industrial growth.
Filmmaker and scholar Tasha Hubbard has described the extermination of the bison as a “strategic” part of Western expansion, while researcher Bethany Hughes emphasized that the photo recorded “a remarkably successful business” built on destruction. Railroads, new tanning methods, and modern rifles only accelerated the slaughter.
Collapse and Survival
By January 1889, only 456 pure-breed bison remained in the United States, most in captivity at Yellowstone and small sanctuaries.
The human cost was immense: within a generation, average height among bison-reliant tribes dropped by more than 2.5 cm, child mortality rose 16%, and income levels remain lower today compared to non-bison-reliant nations.
Some historians also point to epidemics such as anthrax and Texas tick fever contributing to the collapse, but mass killing is undisputed. Restoration efforts continue: the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act of 2023 allocated $25 million to bring bison back to the plains, while projects in Montana and tribal partnerships have already returned hundreds to their ancestral lands.
A chilling 19th-century photo shows two men in bowler hats standing on a mountain of bison skulls.
The image looks like a record of hunting excess, but it hides a calculated campaign to erase the animal and starve Native nations into submission during U.S. expansion…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/NePUYWvBfH
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) September 26, 2025