[quote]ORIGINAL: BOWFANATIC
[quote]Conservationist? Indians routinely burned prairies and forest and slaughtered fleeing animals, many which were not used. They ran bison off of cliffs killing thousands, taking what they could, and left the rest to rot in the hot miday sun
Not being of Native American descent from your country (prarie indians) I can only go by what I've read in books about their culture , as I assume your basing your opinions on (by book) , I'd be very interested in reading the books which describe how they "routinely burned praries and forest and slaughtered fleeing animals , which were not used".
Running bison off cliffs (which I have read) was done on rare occasion , but I find it pretty ingenious myself , and I might add that they used everything from the meat , the hides , and the horns , to the hoofs , and the bones. Very unlike the white man who slaughtered thousands upon thousands for the hide and some meat but left most to rot and is the very reason the bison were approaching extinction.
i agree that the whiteman wasted animals on an unprecentanted scale but muley69 is correct that the indians also wasted. there are buffalo jumps all over montana, this was the preferred method of hunting. they chased them on horseback and burnt the grass to guide them over the cliffs.
Question: how many indians does it take to eat 100 bison before they spoil on a hot summer day?
in fact around the land that my family homesteaded there are several buff jumps that the indians must have ran thousands of bison off of because you can still go out with a shovel and dig up bones and skulls today. further proving they didn't even use the parts of the buffalo that didn't spoil.