Tahtonka with Dr. Leo Olive

Exploring the historical buffalo culture of the Plains Indians, how technology changed it, and how the hide hunters destroyed it. In 1840, it was estimated there were 40 million buffalo on the Great Plains. Buffalo were the Plains Indians' supermarket, providing food, shelter, clothing, and tools. The robe trade with Euro-Americans provided manufactured items. The railroads made possible widespread hunting for hides for the leather industry by 1870. Encouraged by the government and military, who wanted the Indians placed on reservations, the hunters destroyed the buffalo and the Indians' way of life. The great slaughter of the buffalo on the Southern Plains in the 1870s and the Northern Plains in the 1880s forced the Indigenous nations to move to the reservations to survive. Warfare killed many who refused to go to the reservations, and many more died on the reservations from diseases, malnutrition, and hunger. A screening of the film, Tahtonka, with context by and discussion with Dr. Leo Oliva, Professor Emeritus, Fort Hays State University. After the great slaughter of the buffalo, the traditional life and culture of the Indians could not survive. The final conquest, part of the colonization inspired by the Doctrine of Discovery, came quickly when the buffalo were gone.