When American settlers arrived on the Great Plains in the 19th century, the bison they found seemed inexhaustible. Despite their numbers, however, the bison were no match for the settlers’ rifles. The prairie’s most perfectly adapted tenant was an easy source of meat and hides for the aggressive newcomers. By 1890, bison numbers had plummeted from an estimated 60 million to less than a thousand in just four decades of bloodletting. Native American reservations across the Great Plains support a growing number of the animals that the Blackfeet call Iinnii, and today the total U.S. bison population is estimated at 500,000.

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