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How do herds numbering in the tens of millions come so close to vanishing?
In The Extermination of the American Bison, William T. Hornaday traces an animal’s vast range and the destruction of its herds. His 1889 report brings natural history together with an urgent question: how can people destroy so much wildlife, and what will it take to protect the survivors?
Sent to Montana in 1886 to collect bison for the United States National Museum, Hornaday struggles to find them. That experience shapes his account. He gathers numbers, letters and eyewitness stories from hunters, army officers and traders, following the slaughter with plain anger and making an early case for wildlife protection.
What you’ll discover
- An animal across a continent Trace the bison’s range from the Great Slave Lake region into Mexico and far east.
- A search in Montana Follow a museum collector whose difficulty finding bison gives the report its personal urgency.
- The market for hides See how demand for leather drives the destruction of the southern herd.
- The last great northern herd Explore Hornaday’s account of wild bison across Montana, the Dakotas and the Canadian border country.
- An argument for protection Consider Hornaday’s charge that greed and weak laws, rather than nature, cause the loss.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you love the American West, wildlife, frontier history, or the story of how conservation began, and like firsthand accounts and careful numbers.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The bison ranged across America
- Abundance offered no lasting safety
- The wild animal deserves close attention
- Trust in the herd became dangerous
- Waste consumed a valuable resource
- Hardiness offered a reason for preservation
- Railways opened the herds to destruction
- Protection failed through political delay
- Seeing the loss does not stop it
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The Extermination of the American Bison
by William T. Hornaday · 1889
Hornaday counts four million bison in one herd on the Arkansas, then counts the survivors in 1889.
Challenging5–10 hours to read20 languages
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In short
Hornaday counts four million bison in one herd on the Arkansas, then counts the survivors in 1889. What happened in between?
The Extermination of the American Bison at a glance
- Reading time
- About 5 h 50 min4 h 35 min fast, 6 h 55 min slow
- Length
- 83,200 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1889by William T. Hornaday
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Explorers met the bison across a third of America
Europeans first saw the American bison in 1521, when Cortez reached the Aztec capital. King Montezuma kept a zoo there, and a Spanish historian described its rarest animal as a bull with a humped back and a lion's mane. Nine years later Cabeza de Vaca saw bison in Texas and judged the meat finer than Spanish beef.
The eastern story is just as surprising. In 1612 the English captain Samuel Argoll marched inland, and his guides killed wild cattle within fifteen miles of the future capital, Hornaday reasons. Colonel Byrd's surveyors shot bison on the Virginia border in the 1720s and 1730s.
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- 15-minute summary
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Details
- First published
- 1889
- Language
- English
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Hornaday, William T. The Extermination of the American Bison. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-extermination-of-the-american-bison.
Hornaday, W. T. (2026). The extermination of the American bison. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-extermination-of-the-american-bison (Original work published 1889)
Hornaday, William T. The Extermination of the American Bison. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-extermination-of-the-american-bison.
@book{hornaday2026extermination,
author = {Hornaday, William T.},
title = {The Extermination of the American Bison},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-extermination-of-the-american-bison},
note = {First published 1889}
}
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What is The Extermination of the American Bison about?
It describes how the American bison lived, how its vast herds were destroyed in a few decades, and what was saved. Hornaday covers its range, habits and value, the hunting methods, the failed laws, and his own 1886 collecting expedition.
Why did Hornaday write about the bison?
He wanted the public to understand how a species could vanish and to protect other game in time. He was the museum's chief taxidermist, so he also had to build a record of the animal from the last surviving specimens.
How many bison were left when the book was written?
Hornaday counted 1,091 in 1889. He listed eighty-five wild in the United States, an estimated 550 wood bison in Canada, 256 in captivity, and about 200 protected in Yellowstone Park.
The author
William T. Hornaday
1854–1937 · American conservationist and zoologist
William Temple Hornaday (1854–1937) was an American zoologist and conservationist. He was born in Indiana and died in Connecticut. He worked as a taxidermist at the Smithsonian Institution and directed the Bronx Zoo from 1896 to 1926. He wrote The Extermination of the American Bison, published in 1889.
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