When the US Army lost in battle against the Plains Tribes, of which I am a descendent, a different type of war was waged against us. With aims to decimate our food supply and way of life, soldiers and settlers orchestrated a full-on massacre of the buffalo. General Sherman was a proponent of this plan; in 1869, the Army Navy Journal reported him saying, “the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins." Between 1845 and 1895, an estimated 60 million buffalo were slaughtered; with the survival of a mere 500 animals, this was genocide.

This war of attrition took its toll on my people and other Plains Tribes. The crash in buffalo population represented not only a dietary impact, but also a loss of spirit, land, and Indigenous autonomy. The loss was tremendous, unfathomable, and inhumane. With the disappearance of the buffalo, we were forced to become more dependent on settler economies and were forced onto reservations. Tribal land was seized, parceled, and fenced. 

The late 19th century was a time of western expansion and settlers were easily incentivized to kill buffalo as a way to clear land for settlement. A bounty was put on buffalo -- every dead buffalo symbolized a dead Indian. Therefore, teams of hunters roamed the Plains, killing up to 1000 buffalo in a single day. The liquidation of buffalo not only subjugated the tribes but made space for railroads, towns, and the advent of private property, all of which in turn aided in the buffalo’s further demise. Without these wide-ranging herds -- who migrated cross-continental distances -- “American Progress” was unhindered.  

Millions is an ongoing series of life size bison hides created from various materials to acknowledge the 60 million bison lost to Settler Colonialism. This series is informed by my more than human kinship to the Buffalo Nation and a larger narrative work around their visibility.