Expanding the Frontier Against the American Bison“The wilderness dominates the settler. A European finds it in clothing, in industries, in tools, in modes of travel and in thought. He takes it from the wagon and puts it in the birch canoe. He strips him of the clothes of civilization and dresses him in his hunting shirt and moccasin. He puts him in a log cabin... Before long he starts planting corn and plowing with a sharp stick... In short, on the frontier the environment is at first too strong for man. He must accept the conditions given to him, otherwise he will perish, and so... . . it gradually transforms the wilderness, but the result is not the old Europe... The fact is that here is a new product which is American...” --Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893The great westward expansion of Europe I American pioneers represent one of the most celebrated periods in our country's history. We idealize its ruggedness, its characters, and the many safe dichotomies of the frontier: good versus evil, civilization versus savagery, man versus wilderness. The pioneers set out to create a new world, to push the boundaries of home, morality and familiarity. In the process they irreversibly affected established ecosystems and Native American inhabitants. The challenges and harshness of the environment had their effects on the settlers, effects that became ingrained in our national consciousness. We celebrate “rugged individualism” while simultaneously ignoring the price we pay for that stubbornness and strength of character. Westward expansion has caused hundreds of native species of flora and fauna to become extinct or endangered, altered entire ecosystems, such as the Great Plains, and impacted aquifers and watersheds throughout nation. One species famously affected by these pioneers and settlers was the American Bison, a relic of the last ice age. It is estimated that in 1800 over 40 million of these large animals roamed the American plains. By 1883 the population had fallen to less than 6001 units. What happened? Why did those pioneers, so grateful for the bounty that the “new” territory had given them, slaughter the bison throughout the 19th century? “They lived and moved as no other quadruped ever did, in great multitudes, like great armies in review, covering tens of square miles at once. They were so numerous that they often stopped boats in rivers, threatened to overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in later years derailed locomotives and wagons, until railroad engineers learned from experience the wisdom of stopping their trains whenever there were buffalo that they crossed the tracks..