34 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN April/May 2025 Rath & Wright’s buffalo hide yard in 1878, showing 40,000 buffalo hides, Dodge City, Kan. Department of the Interior. National Park service. Credit to U.S National Archives. From R.L. Hough Collection. A pile of American bison skulls from 1892 in Detroit, Mich., that will be ground for fertilizer. Credit Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library. From R.L. Hough Collection. MANIFEST DESTINY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32 CONTINUED ON PAGE 36 governmentʼs view of its Manifest Destiny was to make the Great Plains a productive resource for white settlers. This would take the elimination of the bison to deprive the Native Americans of their primary subsistence, as well as their way of life. The government thought this would make reservation life the only option for the Native Americans. As important, the removal of Indians and bison would free up the land for white settlers to farm or ranch. The third item was a transportation infrastructure for the Great Plains, which would rely on railroads. In terms of transportation, the railroad progressed faster than anticipated with the transcontinental railroad – which initially ran 1,756 miles from Omaha, Neb., to Sacramento, Calif. – being completed on May 10, 1869. To Nebraskaʼs good fortune, the new transcontinental railroad traversed the length of the state, primarily following the rich farmland along the Platte River. To finance the railroad, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads received bonds and land grants. The land grants amounted to 6,400 acres of public land for each mile of track laid, which was approximately two to 20 miles on either side of the tracks that the railroads could sell to support their efforts. Suddenly, the “Great American Desert” that was Nebraska had settlers running the length of the state. Disease was a major factor in subjugating the Native Americans, particularly for the agrarian tribes that lived in permanent, densely populated villages. For example, the highest estimates have the Mandan Nation having 99 percent causalities after three epidemics of smallpox and chicken pox. The Pawnee Nation was thought to have been as high as 60,000 people in the early 18th century, but had dropped down to as few as 4,000 people by 1860 because of both disease and intertribal warfare. The Native American Nations signed numerous treaties with the U.S. government that “guaranteed” them rights to certain lands. For instance, the Lakota signed a treaty in 1868 that barred white settlement “forever” in the Black Hills, which they considered sacred ground. However, when gold was discovered there, the U.S. government reneged on its promises and, by 1875, miners were allowed into the Black Hills with army protection. Among the other many examples was an act of Congress on June 10, 1872, for the sale of portions of Nebraska lands of the Omaha, Pawnee, Otoe and Missouria, and the whole of the Sac and Fox of the Missouri Indian reservations. This forced the Pawnee to leave Nebraska and move to the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). In 1875, the Sioux “having heard a full explanation of the wishes of the Government of the United States” by agents of Indian Affairs, surrendered their right to their traditional hunting grounds in western Nebraska and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. In return for this loss, the U.S. Congress appropriated “$25,000 for the pur- The Last of the Buffalo (1888) by Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830-1902). Credit National Gallery of Art. From R.L. Hough Collection.
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