Market Hunters: Why Do People Kill Native Americans?

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In the early days of United States history market hunters took advantage of what seemed like an endless supply of wild game to sell furs, feathers and meat to colonial traders. Lewis and Clark reported of seeing herds of buffalo that stretched across the plains as far as the eye could see when first passing through this territory in 1804. Estimates of thirty to sixty million buffalo roamed the Great Plains. The demand for buffalo fur back east and in Europe created a market so strong that the Indians and white hunters would kill hundreds of thousands year after year. The government hired market hunters to kill all the buffalo, the native Indians major food source, to pressure the Indians onto reservations. The buffalo herd quickly diminished

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