page_title: Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant
section_title: End of the buffalo herds
hierarchical_section_title: Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant / First term 1869–1873 / Yellowstone and conservation / End of the buffalo herds
caption_attribution_description: English: Bison bison. Original caption: "scientists are helping users of American rangelands meet the challenge of managing multiple uses sustainably.") Français&#160;: Un bison, image prise par Jack Dykinga pour l'USDA. Légende originale de l'USDA: Les scientifiques aident les utilisateurs des pâturages américains à relever le défi de la gestion multiusage durable.
context_page_description: The presidency of Ulysses S. Grant began on March 4, 1869, when Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as the 18th president of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1877. Grant took office in the aftermath of the Civil War, and he presided over much of the Reconstruction Era. A Republican, Grant became president after defeating Democrat Horatio Seymour in the 1868 presidential election. He was reelected in 1872 in a landslide victory, overcoming a split in the Republican Party that resulted in the formation of the Liberal Republicans, which nominated Horace Greeley to oppose him. He was succeeded as president by Republican Rutherford B. Hayes after the contested 1876 presidential election.
  Reconstruction took precedence during Grant's two terms of office. The Ku Klux Klan caused widespread violence throughout the South against African Americans. By 1870, all former Confederate states had been readmitted into the United States and were represented in Congress. However Democrats, or former slave owners, violently refused to accept that freedmen were citizens, who were granted suffrage by the Fifteenth Amendment.
context_section_description: In 1872, around two thousand white buffalo hunters working between Kansas, and Arkansas were killing buffalo for their hides by the many thousands.  The demand was for boots for European armies, or machine belts attached to steam engines. Acres of land were dedicated solely for drying the hides of the slaughtered buffalo. Native Americans protested at the "wanton destruction" of their food supply. Between 1872 in 1874, the buffalo herd south of the Platte River yielded 4.4 million kills by white hunters, and about 1 million animals killed by Indians.  Popular concern for the destruction of the buffalo mounted, and a bill in Congress was passed, HR 921, that would have made buffalo hunting illegally for whites. Taking advice from Secretary Delano, Grant chose to pocket-veto the bill, believing that the demise of the buffalo would reduce Indian wars and force tribes to stay on their respected reservations and to adopt an agricultural lifestyle rather than roaming the plains and hunting buffalo. Ranchers wanted the buffalo gone to open pasture land for their cattle herds. With the buffalo food supply lowered, Native Americans were forced to stay on reservations.
caption: American bison or buffalo; their numbers collapsed in the 1870s forcing the Native Americans who hunted them to depend instead on government-issued food supplies on their reservations.
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