Do Native Americans really use all parts of the buffalo?

[Blake]

@Jodi

Except that the hunter-gatherers under discussion did store food, so they must have been “very exceptional", because for them it was an issue.

Huh?

I can’t even follow what your point is any more.

Surely you recognize a quantitative and qualitative difference between describing a society like the pre-contact Blackfeet as “practice[ing] a combination of hunting/gathering and true farming” – my use – and applying the same words to “every agricultural society on Earth until just two hundred years ago” – your use – including, presumably, the 19th century English yeoman farmer who occasionally strolled out to pot a quail.

What I don’t see is you providing any qualitative or quantitive differnce between the pre-contact blackfeet and a 19th century peasant farmer who collected hundreds of different wild foods every year and obtained a significant amount of their calories from such foods. But if you want to give us these qualitiative and quantitive differences now then we can certainly utilise them from this point on.

Well, off the top of my head, the Cherokee did. They stored winter food stuffs in communal storage huts and/or personal baskets or bags. Do you personally find it necessary to bury your potatoes and beans in order to keep them through the winter?

What I find it necessary to do has no bearing on what someone in a different climate and different society needed ot do 200 years ago. It has even less bearing on what you said.

Concenring Cherokee storgae of food “storehouse for corn, beans, dried pumpkins and othe rprovisions… well daubed within and without with loam or clay that makes them tight and fit to keep out the smallest insect, there being a small door at the gable end …cementing the fdoor up with the same earth when they take the corn out of the crib”

So you may be pedantically correct, they weren’t buried, they were place din an earthen house baove gound. tahtis so much easier than burial. And it still doesn’t adress your cliam that such beans weren’t dried prior to storage.

What? I never said the Blackfeet were sedentary townspeople. I don’t know what you’re talking about here.

Let me take it slow:

I said that only rare HGS such as the people of the Northwest stored food.
You said that you wanted to extend the Nortwest onto the Great Plains.
I pointed out that unless you could provdie evidence that the people of the Great Plains were sedentary townsfolk as are the food storers fo the Northwest then such an extrapolation was ridiculous.
Can you provide such evidence?

Yes, actually, you did. You said, “The only HGs groups in the entire world that I have heard of storing food in any significant amount are the Indians of the northwest extending into Alaska, and they primarily stored meat.”

That is certainly an example of me NOT saying that nomadic Native Americans did not store meat.

Now can you please quote where I said that nomadic Native Americans did not store meat, as you claimed? Otherwsie retrat the strawman.

That is where you said nomadic Native Americans did not store meat. Not nothing “remotely like that;” exactly that. If you’d like to clarify, fine.

Look it’s quite simple Jodi. If you insist that I said exactly that, then quote where I said exactly that. If not then can the strawman. You are fooling nobody in being dishonest.

In reality the problem is due to you not understanding that hunter gatherer and

Sure. Well, first of all, for the premise they were hunter-gatherers, see your own cite. Other than that, see Jackson, The Piikani Blackfeet: A Culture Under Siege, Linderman, Blackfeet Indians, and Bullchild, The Sun Came Down: A History Of The World As My Blackfeet Elders Told It.

Seen all those. Nowhere do they say that the Blackfeet were HGs by the time they were storing food. In fact two of them agree with what I stated: the Blackfeet stored no food prior to their domestication of horses.

Cite for “conventional wisdom”?

See my previpus reference cite. Other than that, see Linderman, Blackfeet Indians, and Bullchild, The Sun Came Down: A History Of The World As My Blackfeet Elders Told It.
[/quote]

Archeological evidence indicates they were used starting anywhere from 600 years ago to perhaps 8000 years – clearly pre-horse. So unless you think the People were going to the trouble to corral and stampede entire herds of buffalo but then making no attempt to store food for winter, your argument to “conventional wisdom” is untenable.

Based on what? Are you claiming that no people anywhere have killed large numbers of animals just because the easiest methaod was to kill large numbers, even though they lacked the ability to store the food? If so them I have some interesting references for you.

This is also reinforced by the timings of the buffalo jumps – late fall

Hmm, could this perhaps have something to do with the fact that the buffalo migrated thorugh the territory in late fall? Or are you suggesting they might harvest buffalo when none are available if they can’t store the food?

and the obvious fact that pemmican – a staple of the Blackfeet diet is itself a form of stored food.

Look Jodi you can’t use the existence of stored food after the Blackfeet adopted horse agriculture as evdidence of the fact that they stored food before adopting horse agriculture. It makes no sense at all.

So hunting buffalo pre-horse was “difficult for people on foot.” There’s a news flash! How does that argue against, as opposed to for, storage of meat for winter when they could get their hands on it?

Sigh. The point of the article is that the blackfeet weren’t carryting around the huge quantities of food and storing huge communal qunatities prior to introduction of the horse. They existed as smallbands and had limited carrying capacity. Large numbers of anaimls were killed when they were vaialble and the tribes came together at that tiome. Once the buffalo left the tribes fragmented into small bands. Unlike post-horse blackfoot culture and not in any way indictive of food storage.

And it is clear that the occupation of “lush river bottoms of the major rivers that cross the Plains” does not refer to the Blackfeet, of Dog Days or of the Horse, pre- or post-contact; it refers to settlements of 2000 years ago, which then migrated East, as is shown by the reference to “significant reliance upon cultivated foods”

Good grief Jodi, the article states very specifically and very clearly that before they adopted horse agriculture the Blackfoot lived in the river valleys and moved out onto the plains only seaosnally when bufflao were present.

“Before acquiring the horse … the Blackfoot … were foot nomads living in loosely organized bands who seasonally moved out onto the plains to hunt buffalo”

How much clearer can they make it? Giving oyu the benefit of the doubt you simply didn’t read the reference.

Odd that you would leave out the part that makes it crystal clear this author is NOT talking about the Blackfeet.

WTF? The author uses the exact name “Blackfoot”. This is ridiulous.

I notice how quick you are to trot out accusations of dishonesty and strawmen; I will attempt to think of other reasons for your curious editing of the text.

Yes, it was for brevity, nothing more.

If you are not being dishonest in ignoring where the author states clarly that “Before acquiring the horse … the Blackfoot … were foot nomads living in loosely organized bands who seasonally moved out onto the plains to hunt buffalo” then you are simply incapable of understanding simple sentence.

I see no other plausible explanation beyond inablite to understand. That does not excuse you claiming that my edit altered the meaning. It did no later the meaning. The author was specificaly referring to the Blackfeet, and he was specifically sytaing that before they had horses they dwelt in the river vallleys and only seasonally moved onto the plain.

I am calling on you for an apology.

Well, what sort of evidence would you like, other than the evidence of the piskuns (the Jumps), correlated with their seasonal migration (to the jumps for fall camp and the buffalo kills, thence to winter camp to hunker down), coupled with the evidence of what they ate all winter long?

Well let’s start with your evidence for what the pre-horse Blackfeet ate all winter long.
Do we get to see this evidince?

The mere existence of the jumps tells us nothing other than that these people preferred to stampede buffalo over cliffs rather than try to kill them on foot with a spear. That proves they were clever enough to know that wounded buffalo on open ground is dangerous to a man on foot. It does not prove they stored the meat.

The same applies to the seasonal kills. Buffalo on the great plains were nomadic. They were only present at certain times of year, it is hardly surprising they could only be hravested at certain times of year.

A simple question Jody: do you think that evidence people only harvested salmon during one season of the year is proof that they were storing the salmon?

Let’s see YOUR evidence that the Blackfeet were wantonly killing “massive amounts of meat” but then stupidly only taking what they could eat at the moment.

I’ll see what I can turn up, but until then you made the positive claim and I am asking if you have any evidence for the claim. So far you have produced nothing.

Cite?

Sure, this is so uncontroversial I could bury you in references. the fact that you even challenge it tells me a lot.

Cordain, L., Eaton, S.B. et al 2002 “The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: meat-based, yet non-atherogenic” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition 56.

“the dominant foods in the majority of huntergatherer diets were derived from animal food sources. Most (73%) of the world’s hunter-gatherers obtained >50% of their subsistence from hunted and fished animal foods, whereas only 14% of worldwide hunter-gatherers obtained >50% of their subsistence from gathered plant foods.” Spielman, K.A., Eder J.F. 1994 “Hunters and Farnmers, Then and Now” Ann. Rev Anthropology 23.

"No hunter-gatherer population is entirely or largely dependent (86–100% subsistence) on gathered plant foods, whereas 20% (n = 46) are highly or solely dependent (86–100%) on fished and hunted animal foods. " Cordain, L., Brand Miller, J et al 2000 “Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 71:3.
In summary, your claim that HGs rarely ate meat and didn’t eat much of it is so much bunkum. All HGs obtain in excess of 15% of thei animal protein form food and most get most of their food from animals.

So let’s see YOUR evidence that the Blackfeet were able to obtain meat “daily” throughout long Montana and Alberta winters.

HG Blackfeet? You just saw my evidence.

This wasn’t true of fur traders or even early western settlers, so it’s hard to see how it could have been magically true for the Blackfeet.

Since you apparently don’t see how people who have lived in an area for millenia might be somehow a bit better at finding food than someone who just wandered in I won’t even bother explaining.

Your beloved “HGs” of the zebra and the kangaroo weren’t slogging out through the snow to find them.

No? So it doesn’t snow in Tasmania then.

Tell me Jody, is it your position that all HGs in climates where it snows must have stored meat to survive, including Neanderthals and H. erectus? If not then what exactly is your point here?

Sure. "Poison: a substance with an inherent property that tends to destroy life and impair health.” (Emphasis added.) Maybe to you that includes simple detergents, I don’t know, but mine does not.

Honestly Jody I am having more and more difficulty seing what your point is.
Surely you are not you claiming that saponins don’t have an inherent property that tends to destroy life and impair health? If that is what you are claiming then how do you think they kill fish? Some sort of extrinsic factor? Perusasion perhaps?

Wait a second. You said “All these practices were extremely wasteful and would never be allowed by any western people.” The use of “were” (past tense) indicated to me we were discussing historic but contemporary (meaning, contemporary with each other) “western” and “non-western” practices.

WTF?

We were discussing the pratices explicitely listed: use of saponins, glycosides, rotenones and biological deoxygenation to poison fish for harvest. I have no idea how you managed to twist that into anyhting other than what is explicitely written:

North American Indians harvested fish by poisoning using saponins, glycosides, rotenones and biological deoxygenation. No western people would allow the harvetsing of fish by using saponins, glycosides, rotenones and biological deoxygenation. thatis what I wrote, that is what I meant, that is what I said.

…but are you now comparing indigenous fishing techniques used by pre-contact peoples with modern legislated fishing practices? Moving the moral goal posts quite a bit there, aren’t you?

Double WTF. Moving the goalposts? WTF are you tallking about.

The very first sentence in this thread states that “Native Americans were much less wasteful than everyone else, and they used every single part of the animal.” EVERYONE else. Quite explicitely making a comparison with modern , western society.

How the fuck is directly adressing the very first sentence in the OP mving the goalposts?

And as for naming a “single western nation” where wasteful fishing practices would be allowed in the modern day, try any nation that allows whaling…

WTF? Whaling does not and never has involved poisoning the water to stun the whale.
Jody, at this point I give up. You are posting nothing but non-sequiturs that elicit only WTF readctions. They are menaingless and have absolutely no refernce to what is being discussed. And I just remebered, you have history of doing this when you try to “defend” American Indians. More than once I have invited you to come to GD to settl;e thes eclaims and you have backed out.

I give up on you.

For those interested in the facts:

HGs in North Am or anywhere else derived huge amounts of their calorie intake form animal foods. It was not a rarity as Jody suggested.

Indians did indeed kill large numbers of buffalo and leave them to rot without ever laying a knife to them.

Indians did indeed harvest fish by poisoning the water and killing everything but only harvesting some fish.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

As noted above, efficiency and frugality in slaughtering practices were not limited to Native Americans. I remember in one of the Little House on the Prairie books, the family slaughters a pig with the help of a neighbor, and they use it all - they even turn the bladder into a little ball for Laura and her sister.

[Jodi]

@Blake

I can’t even follow what your point is any more.

Then we’ll leave it. You’ve given me a lot to get through here.

What I don’t see is you providing any qualitative or quantitive differnce between the pre-contact blackfeet and a 19th century peasant farmer who collected hundreds of different wild foods every year and obtained a significant amount of their calories from such foods. But if you want to give us these qualitiative and quantitive differences now then we can certainly utilise them from this point on.

The 19th cetury English yeoman farmer – I never said peasant farmer – did not “collect hundreds of different wild food every year.” I have no inclination to get into some tangential debate about the eating habits of 19th century Englishmen who personally grew (or, rather, oversaw the growth) of much of his food, and traded or bought the rest, versus the eating habits of pre-contact Native Americans. Frankly, I trust the ridiculousness of saying they are the same or even similar is pretty self-evident.

So you may be pedantically correct, they weren’t buried, they were place din an earthen house baove gound.

I’m not sure how being “pendantically” correct is different from being completely correct, which I was. Unless you’re operating under some definition of “buried” that includes “stored above ground” which, heck, for all I know you are.

And it still doesn’t adress your cliam that such beans weren’t dried prior to storage.

Please point out where I ever said beans weren’t dried prior to storage. I think you know full-well I never said that, but having being so completely wrong in your gross generalization about all Native American food storage practices, you retreat to asking me to address a “claim” I never made.

Look it’s quite simple Jodi. If you insist that I said exactly that, then quote where I said exactly that. If not then can the strawman. You are fooling nobody in being dishonest.

I’m really finding your accusations of dishonesty to be tiresome. You are not such a font of elucidation and wisdom that every word dripping from your mouth shines with complete transparent clarity. I would suggest that you consider the possibility that any difference of opinion as to meaning is more likely to arise from misunderstanding than from dishonesty. Even if you are somehow unable to consider that possibility, I give you fair warning, for what litte conseqence it might be: I do not debate or discuss with people who accuse me of dishonesty. Life is short, you know? You might keep that in mind if you’re looking to wind up the discussion: A third post accusing me of dishonesty should do it.

Moving on: It seems you are using a very proscribed and pendantic definition of “hunter-gatherer” that bestows that status on migrating non-agrarian societies that move about by foot but withdraws the label from those who follow the same seasonal patterns (same food, same shelter, same camps, same society) on horseback. This is not a distinction I’m interested in drawing and not one I feel is worth arguing about. AFAIK, “hunter-gatherer” as a broad term is used to distinguish from/contrast to agrarian-based societies. This is certainly how Wiki defines it.

Look Jodi you can’t use the existence of stored food after the Blackfeet adopted horse agriculture as evidence of the fact that they stored food before adopting horse agriculture. It makes no sense at all.

Of course I can. There is no indication that the Blackfeet magically changed their social movements or diet to demonstrate a shift to a reliance on new types of foodstuffs (i.e., stored food) after about 1730 (arrival of the horse) as opposed to before 1730 (dog days). They didn’t being siloing food; they didn’t become sedentary; they didn’t change the composition of their diet. This is your assertion, so let’s see you back it up.

Sigh. The point of the article is that the blackfeet weren’t carryting around the huge quantities of food and storing huge communal qunatities prior to introduction of the horse.

I never said anything about “huge quantities of food” or “storing huge communal quantities.” Confine yourself to things I said, please. Though it is worth pointing out that there is no evidence of “carrying around huge quantities of food” or “storing huge communal quantities” after the introduction of the horse, either.

They existed as smallbands and had limited carrying capacity. Large numbers of anaimls were killed when they were vaialble and the tribes came together at that tiome. Once the buffalo left the tribes fragmented into small bands. Unlike post-horse blackfoot culture and not in any way indictive of food storage.

How does limited carrying capacity indicate no storage? Wouldn’t it rather indicate that your storage ability is limited to your carrying capacity? How does that equate to NO storage at all? The Blackfeet came together for the Sun Dance (or its predecessor, the medicine bundle gathering) in July. They came together again in September or early October at the Jumps for the buffalo drive. The summer gathering was not dependent on the viability of the buffalo, and the more general small-band structure was not because of a lack of buffalo. And again I see no cites for anything you say.

Good grief Jodi, the article states very specifically and very clearly that before they adopted horse agriculture the Blackfoot lived in the river valleys and moved out onto the plains only seasonally when bufflao were present: “Before acquiring the horse … the Blackfoot … were foot nomads living in loosely organized bands who seasonally moved out onto the plains to hunt buffalo.” How much clearer can they make it? Giving oyu the benefit of the doubt you simply didn’t read the reference.

Are you serious? Look, the entire quote is listed in my last post. It is very clear when it is talking about people living in “lush river valleys” and when it is talking about the Blackfeet, and it is crystal clear that the people referenced in the first sentence (dwellers in lush river valleys) are not the Blackfeet. I even helpfully bolded the text demonstrating this – which you had excised. I really can’t make it any clearer than that. The cite says what it says; anyone can read it and decide which of us is off-base here. .

Yes, it was for brevity, nothing more.

Ah. And the complete change of meaning was only an unfortunate side-effect. Well, these things happen.

I am calling on you for an apology.

Oh.

Well let’s start with your evidence for what the pre-horse Blackfeet ate all winter long. Do we get to see this evidence?

I’ve already addressed this. They ate dried buffalo and dried berries – and dried buffalo mixed with dried berries (pemmican). They also ate whatever else they could catch or find, but that was not a constant supply given the weather. BTW, they gathered berries in July (The Moon Of Ripe Berries) and they stocked up on buffalo in September (The Moon Of The Rains). And what did they do with the berries and buffalo until winter came? They dried it, converted it to pemmican, and kept it (stored it).

The mere existence of the jumps tells us nothing other than that these people preferred to stampede buffalo over cliffs rather than try to kill them on foot with a spear. That proves they were clever enough to know that wounded buffalo on open ground is dangerous to a man on foot. It does not prove they stored the meat.

Do you have a cite for the buffalo jump being simply a matter of preference? Because ISTM that the logistics of orchestrating a buffalo hunt were not necessarily easier (to be preferred) to killing buffalo with bows and arrows or spears. To the contrary, ISTM self-evident that the buffalo jumps were used as a means of slaughtering large numbers of buffalo at a single time so that an ample supply of meat would be available for the coming winter. Because here’s a news flash: The Jump required lining the tribe or band up on either side of the chute to frighten the buffalo into staying in line. It also required a young man out front of the buffalo (covered by a buffalo skin) to lead the buffalo stampede – one having enough speed and agility to then get the heck out of the way. (“Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump” takes its name from an unsuccessful example of such a young man.) So perhaps you have some cite weighing the danger of being part of a human wall in close proximity to a stampeding herd of buffalo, versus the danger of of a single wounded buffalo confronted by several warriors on open ground? Because otherwise this is just more speculation, and mine is as valid as yours.

A simple question Jody: do you think that evidence people only harvested salmon during one season of the year is proof that they were storing the salmon?

A simple question, Blaik: Is the yearly harvest also accompanied by evidence that salmon is what the people consumed at other times of year? Would that not be proof of storage? Because if they harvest once a year, but eat it at other times, how do you account for that without storage? Again, the Blackfeet ate dried buffalo and pemmican throughout the winter; it was their staple food, the complete mainstay of their diet. How you imagine they accomplished that without food storage is beyond me.

Sure, this is so uncontroversial I could bury you in references. the fact that you even challenge it tells me a lot.

Yeah, this tells me a lot about you, too, because what you said – and what I asked for a cite for – was “For most HGs, even if you want to restrict it to North am, meat was on the diet year round and was obtained daily.” (Emphasis added.)

Tellingly, not a single one of your cites addresses North America. Instead, they are all “worldwide” cites, a great example of how you overgeneralize from a specific circumstance (the Blackfeet) to some universal truth which must apply to all hunter-gatherer societies, when surely you as a practitioner in this field know that every archeological ethnobioligical “rule” is merely a generalization for which there are exceptions. Be that as it may, none of your cites speaks even to North America generally, much less northern (snowy) North America, much less the Blackfeet specifically. So I have seen your evidence. It is not persuasive.

Aaaand, the rest of this seems to be you claiming confusion and inability to see my points, which frankly I don’t think require re-posting after having been posted at such length the first time. (I note however, a crucial difference between having explained once and, “not even bothering to explain.”)

I give up on you.

Oh. Well, if you could see your way clear to “give up” a little earlier, you’d save me a lot of typing, which would be greatly appreciated.

[Moirai]

@WhyNot

Well, of course not! Then what would they use to make their canes and walking sticks, silly?

*Note: the bull penis canes and walking sticks are not gennyouwine Native American Indian First People’s artifacts. They are, however, bull penises.

Oh yeah, my dad has one. It’s… odd. We usually let people handle it for a minute or two before we tell them what it is- freaks 'em out totally!

Although dad’s bull penis cane is quite straight and not as gnarly-looking as the ones in the link.

[LouisB]

@Lust4Life

Ah manys the time I’ve watched herds of Haggis roaming free in the glen ever alert for predatory Bagpipes!

I love the Highlands.

Has anyone ever domesticated a Haggis? Has anyone ever tried? Will they breed in captivity? Does anyone care?

[Argent_Towers]

This thread has been making me extremely hungry.

Has anyone ever opened up a Native American restaurant? Serving stuff like buffalo, venison, wild game, cornbread, squash, etc? I would totally go.

[Jodi]

@Argent Towers

This thread has been making me extremely hungry.

Has anyone ever opened up a Native American restaurant? Serving stuff like buffalo, venison, wild game, cornbread, squash, etc? I would totally go.

You can make pemmican yourself if you want to – and if you like a mixture of dried meat, meat fat, and dried berries.

Here is a traditional pemmican recipe (three of them, actually),

and

here’s a recipe for more tasty pemmican.

The difference? Native American food (at least Plains cuisine) tended to be bland, the savoriness of fat being the delicacy. Modern Americans prefer sweeter, saltier, more highly flavored food. That’s what the second recipe gives you.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Argent Towers

This thread has been making me extremely hungry.

Has anyone ever opened up a Native American restaurant? Serving stuff like buffalo, venison, wild game, cornbread, squash, etc? I would totally go.

Check out the thread Are there any American Indian restaurants?

[Nava]

Well, one of the virtues of pigs is that you use the whole animal. Cows, pretty much (I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a use for cow intestines, while pigs’ do get used).

But only if you slaughter them in manageable amounts and if there aren’t “better” materials around for whatever. Bone jewelry and drinking horns kind of went out of fashion a while back, you know.

I imagine that Native Americans were similarly frugal to, say, medieval European farmers; there might be times when a group of hunters managed to drive off a cliff more buffalo than they could deal with and part of the bounty would go to waste (simply because a vulture got to it first), but in general you used as much as you could. A lot of our wastefulness comes with massification.

[Blake]

@Nava

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a use for cow intestines

1. You’ve never heard of sausages? What do you think sausage skins are made of? Well these days they are often cellulose, but they are still often made of intestine.

2. Never heard of catgut? Used to be used for tennis racquet strings, medical sutures and a milllion other uses. Of course it wasn’t atcual cat gut, it was a contraction of cattle gut. Not used so much any more, but still widely available.

3. Never heard of meat meal, or hoof and horn fertiser? A modern cattle abbatoir would never waste anything as valuiable as intestine. Any that doesn’t get used for sausage casings or other ends goes into the slops hopper for procesing into meat meal for fish or poultry or is turned into organic fertiliser.

I imagine that Native Americans were similarly frugal to, say, medieval European farmers

Many groups, probably most, were far more wasteful. European farmers had the luxury of domesticated animals that they were able to slaughter at their leisure with no risk. Indians lacked that luxury and as such often resorted to wasteful methods.

That was compounded by the problem of common resource ownership. European farmers couldn’t poison streams because they belonged to the crown, they couldn’t hunt by setting fire to pasture either, or attarct game by lighting forest fires or indulge in the many other wasteful practices that various Indian groups used. Because most Indian groups viewed things like stream and pasture and herd as common property there was little control on how it was exploited. It was an extended tragedy of the commons.

there might be times when a group of hunters managed to drive off a cliff more buffalo than they could deal with and part of the bounty would go to waste (simply because a vulture got to it first)

It wasn’t simply because the vultures got to it first. It was simply because it went rotten before there was any chance of eating it. See my references above, the Indians never even made the attempt to butcher the animals.

A lot of our wastefulness comes with massification.

You have that completely about face: our resource thriftiness comes from “massification”.

It has been the use of large abbatoirs that has enabled modern western societies to achieve what no other culture in history has done: we utilise every single part of every single animal we kill. You can not name a single part of an animal entering modern western abbatoir that is discarded. Blood, bones, hooves, horns, even the faeces and paunch. All are collected and sold by modern abbatoirs. And that is true for every single animal processed.

If you can name a single human culture that has managed to waste less animal material than modern western society with massive industrial abbatoirs then your point will have some validity, but I know you will be unable to do so.

I know it’s popular with certai elements to claim that western societies are wasteful, but claims that large industrial abbatoirs contribute to waste rather actually run counter to the facts. Massive abbatoirs eliminate wastefulness, they don’t cause it.

[Nava]

Spanish sausages are made with pig intestines. Then again, they’re either pig meat or mix.

Same for chorizo, salchichón, french saucisson, longaniza, morcilla (blood sausage), etc. Pig.

[Blake]

Seriously, there are no beef sausages in Spain?

And I thought it was such a nice country.

[mangeorge]

I’ve never heard that we’re wasteful of animals. I do know that we tend to eat the choice parts though. Like Spam, for example.
Except in France, where they do eat it all.

[devilsknew]

Again, the particular method of the buffalo run as a form of hunting, was by its very nature, wasteful. It was overkill. This doesn’t indict the Indians as wasteful hunters. Rather it shows a particular method of hunting that was smart, easy, and effecient, and supplied enough food for a great number of people for a very long time.

So, riddle me this Blake, if the Indians were such wasteful hunters of decimation why didn’t they, in all of their thousands of years on the plains and in numbers close to a million, bring the Bison to extinction?

The Indians only ran buffalo seasonally with the migration and used what they needed for survival. Buffalo skinners sought them out and killed them in numbers far greater than any single buffalo run could match.The white man did the wasting, he was the one to nearly wipe out the bison… Millions dead for but one thing, their hides and the pelf of capitalism.

[WhyNot]

@devilsknew

The Indians only ran buffalo seasonally with the migration and used what they needed for survival. Buffalo skinners sought them out and killed them in numbers far greater than any single buffalo run could match.The white man did the wasting, he was the one to nearly wipe out the bison… Millions dead for but one thing, their hides and the pelf of capitalism.

Wait, I thought the white dudes where trying to eradicate (or at least “encourage to move elsewhere”) the Natives by killing off their favored resource? It was an *intentional *(near)extinction, in other words.

[Jodi]

@WhyNot

Wait, I thought the white dudes where trying to eradicate (or at least “encourage to move elsewhere”) the Natives by killing off their favored resource? It was an *intentional *(near)extinction, in other words.

AFAIK, the mass depopulation of the buffalo was due to the market demand for buffalo robes, buffalo tongue (tongue being in the 19th century a great delicacy) and later buffalo bones, which were ground up to make bone fertilizer. The fur trade of northwest North America originally focused on beaver but then as the beaver became more scarce the focus shifted to buffalo. Buffalo were also negatively impacted – sometimes literally – by the coming of the railroads and by fences, which broke up their migration routes.

I note that the Wiki article on American bison says “Bison were hunted almost to extinction in the 19th century and were reduced to very small numbers by the mid-1880s. One major cause was a government initiative to starve the population of the Plains Indian by killing off their main food source, the bison – citation needed” to which I say, “citation needed” indeed. Even if the starvation of Native Americans was a side effect of bison depopulation that was welcomed by some, that was never the main impetus for the slaughter. As usual, the main motivator was money.

ETA: Here’s an interesting short article that pins the decimation of the bison on new leather tanning techniques in Europe, which inflated the demand for bison hides.

[mangeorge]

So the stories about the popularity of shooting buffalo from trains is a myth?

[Jodi]

@mangeorge

So the stories about the popularity of shooting buffalo from trains is a myth?

I’m not sure. I don’t think I said or implied anything on the subject either way.

[Blake]

@devilsknew

Again, the particular method of the buffalo run as a form of hunting, was by its very nature, wasteful. It was overkill. This doesn’t indict the Indians as wasteful hunters. Rather it shows a particular method of hunting that was smart, easy, and effecient, and supplied enough food for a great number of people for a very long time.

No, it doesn’t. It just shows that you have conflated the wasteful with unsustainable. If a practice is wasteful, as you admit was the case wiht these buffalo hunts, it doesn’t become thrifty just because it is sustainable.

So, riddle me this Blake, if the Indians were such wasteful hunters of decimation why didn’t they, in all of their thousands of years on the plains and in numbers close to a million, bring the Bison to extinction?

1. Indians did exterminate most bison species. There were at least 4 and probably 8 species of bsion when the Indians arrived. The only species that survvived Indian hunting was the Eurasian bison that exists in North Am today.

2. You are once again conflating sustainable with thrifty. the words are not synonyms. If Bill Gates were to light his cigar with a million dollar bill every hour would that not be wasteful? But if such behaviour is so wasteful why could Bill do this every hours for the next 10, 000 years without making any dent in his personal fortune? Hopefully you see that the answer is that just because something can be sustained indefintitely doesn’t mean that it is an effiecint and thrifty use of resources.

The Indians only ran buffalo seasonally with the migration and used what they needed for survival.

In what way is killing abuffalo and not even touching it afterwards “using what is needed for survival”? How that it using the buffalo at all?

The white man did the wasting…

Please epxlain how a white man killing buffalo so he can earn the money needed to feed his family is being wasteful, but an Indian killing a buffalo and leaving it to rot because it’s easy is not being wasteful?

This statement is a total non sequitur.

…he was the one to nearly wipe out the bison…

Once again, you have conflated sustainabilty and thrift. The words are not synonyms. In terms of waste it matters not at all if a process exhausts a resource.

If the buffalo were actually exterminated, yet every single molcule was utilised that would not be in any way wasteful by any definition. You may call it unwise or thoughtless or destructive, but it is not by any stretch of any defitnion wasteful.

Conversely if a bufallo were killed every day for no reason whatsoever that woudl be wasteful despite having no impact whatsoever on the viablityof the buffalo herd.

You seem to have osme idea that sustainable and thrify are synonyms. That is not the case. We are discussing waste here, not sustainabalility.

Millions dead for but one thing, their hides and the pelf of capitalism.

Right, so how does that make it in any way wasteful? Capitalism is also not a synomym for wasteful.

If a resource is being utilised it is not being wasted. It doesn’t matterif it is being used for a purpose that you don’t personally agree with, it still isn’t being wasted.

In contrast when Indians killed thousands of buffaloes and put them to no use whatsoever, justleft them to rot, that was wasteful.

[devilsknew]

@Blake

No, it doesn’t. It just shows that you have conflated the wasteful with unsustainable. If a practice is wasteful, as you admit was the case wiht these buffalo hunts, it doesn’t become thrifty just because it is sustainable.

1. Indians did exterminate most bison species. There were at least 4 and probably 8 species of bsion when the Indians arrived. The only species that survvived Indian hunting was the Eurasian bison that exists in North Am today.

2. You are once again conflating sustainable with thrifty. the words are not synonyms. If Bill Gates were to light his cigar with a million dollar bill every hour would that not be wasteful? But if such behaviour is so wasteful why could Bill do this every hours for the next 10, 000 years without making any dent in his personal fortune? Hopefully you see that the answer is that just because something can be sustained indefintitely doesn’t mean that it is an effiecint and thrifty use of resources.

In what way is killing abuffalo and not even touching it afterwards “using what is needed for survival”? How that it using the buffalo at all?

Please epxlain how a white man killing buffalo so he can earn the money needed to feed his family is being wasteful, but an Indian killing a buffalo and leaving it to rot because it’s easy is not being wasteful?

This statement is a total non sequitur.

Once again, you have conflated sustainabilty and thrift. The words are not synonyms. In terms of waste it matters not at all if a process exhausts a resource.

If the buffalo were actually exterminated, yet every single molcule was utilised that would not be in any way wasteful by any definition. You may call it unwise or thoughtless or destructive, but it is not by any stretch of any defitnion wasteful.

Conversely if a bufallo were killed every day for no reason whatsoever that woudl be wasteful despite having no impact whatsoever on the viablityof the buffalo herd.

You seem to have osme idea that sustainable and thrify are synonyms. That is not the case. We are discussing waste here, not sustainabalility.

Right, so how does that make it in any way wasteful? Capitalism is also not a synomym for wasteful.

If a resource is being utilised it is not being wasted. It doesn’t matterif it is being used for a purpose that you don’t personally agree with, it still isn’t being wasted.

In contrast when Indians killed thousands of buffaloes and put them to no use whatsoever, justleft them to rot, that was wasteful.

It was a means of hunting, the nature was indiscriminate and deadly. But really, what is the more efficient death dealer-- the culling of a herd, indiscriminately, or the accuracy, personaliization, and potency of modern weaponry? Their hunting camp was not at all unlike an abbatoir. To assume that they didn’t have an organized processing of buffalo dedicated to it’s dissemination, processing, and ultimate use is cultural imperialism at worst, and cultural arrogance at best… I agree with you that it wasn’t the most efficient use of resources, but I guarantee pound for pound, that the Indian Hunter made more use of every kill than the modern hunter.
Your flippant doesn’t allow for the evolution of Indian conservation, either. The ecology that you conflate with sustainability doesn’t add up. Believe it or not, the Indians were the first conservationists in America and might actually owe to our current abundance of wildlife.

How can you honestly say that the Indians destroyed the buffalo, when it is so well documented that the “Americans” killed them off in numbers that were unsustainable.,

Are you being obtuse?