USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Bison hunters poured onto the Great Plains. By 1880, the combination of disease, environmental stress, and hunting left the bison near extinction. The destruction of the bison had two important consequences: It left the vast grasslands open to the herds of cattle moving north from Texas.

Detailed explanation-2: -By the early 1880s there were only a few free ranging bison left. After the great slaughter of the American bison during the 1800s, the number of bison remaining alive in all of North America declined to as low as 541, with as few as 300 in the United States.

Detailed explanation-3: -The decline of the buffalo is largely a nineteenth-century story. The size of the herds was affected by predation (by humans and wolves), disease, fires, climate, competition from horses, the market, and other factors. Fires often swept the grasslands, sometimes maiming and killing buffaloes.

Detailed explanation-4: -Drought is only one reason for the bison’s decline. Horses, which spread from New Mexico onto the Great Plains in the late 1600s and early 1700s, also stressed bison populations. The Comanches, eminent equestrians of the Southern Plains, kept vast herds of horses for riding and trading.