What term was applied to the American Indians because they moved to follow the buffalo?
1 Answer
Several different terms are used, including "nomadic", "hunter-gatherers," and "buffalo people."
Explanation:
It's important to understand that before Christopher Columbus, there were hundreds of groups or tribes of American Indian or Native people. They had many different ways of organizing themselves and their activities. There were more than just the two customary styles of living that we hear about: nomadic and sedentary.
Groups or tribes that followed the buffalo moved frequently and carried their belongings with them from place to place. But generally they had home places to which they returned at least annually. Because they moved a lot, scholars have referred to them as nomadic.
Groups or tribes that planted gardens generally stayed in one place for most or all of the year and built relatively permanent houses. Some groups sent hunting parties out to kill buffalo, deer, antelope, elk, or other animals for food when supplies ran low. Other groups traded with "nomadic" tribes for meat.
Some groups planted gardens and built relatively permanent houses, but then traveled to specific places during certain times of the year to gather berries, to fish, to make maple syrup, to gather nuts, or for other reasons. Their lives were arranged around the growing seasons and the requirements of their spiritual beliefs.
There were buffalo species that lived all over North America, not just in what is known as the Plains area. Unfortunately, European immigrants and their American descendants wiped out all the species of buffalo except for a few hundred buffalo (now living in Yellowstone Park) by killing them by the millions between 1850 and 1890. They did this in order to cause the demise of the remaining Indians who had not already died from European diseases, wars against European immigrants and their American descendants, and malnutrition.
The American government figured that if the buffalo were gone, that then the Indians' ways of life would die too. Remaining Indians could then be "civilized" by forcing them to learn English, attend American schools, learn agriculture, become Christians, and totally assimilate into European American culture.
Once the buffalo were gone, and the Indians were confined to reservations by the U.S. government, then the way of life of following the buffalo disappeared, as had been intended.
Today, several tribes have started new buffalo herds, based on the Yellowstone buffalo, in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. The herds are very small, but over time, they will grow larger.
(Laws were passed to destroy the Indian ways of life, including the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Seven Major Crimes Act of 1885, the General Allotment Act of 1887, the Curtis Act of 1898, the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, and others, that you will be astonished to read if you believe that the U.S. government treated the Indians fairly.)
