The Extermination of the American Bison

The Extermination of the American Bison is a book by William Temple Hornaday first published in 1889 by the Government Printing Office.[1] It was reprinted from a report Hornaday wrote for the Smithsonian Institution in the years 1886–87.[2]

Illustration of a bison from the 1889 publication of Extermination.

Title page

Extermination contains an exhaustive account of bison ecology and the story of the near-entire destruction of the bison population in the United States.[3] The book argues for the consequent necessity of protecting the small number of bison then in Yellowstone National Park.[3]

The book is divided into three parts.[4] The first relates to the habits, geographical distribution, and probable population of the bison before the European settlement of North America.[2] The second describes the extermination of the animal by industrial-scale bison hunting. It argues that the speed of extermination has been increased by unnecessary slaughter and the lack of legal protection of the bison population, among other things.[2] The third part describes the Smithsonian's 1886 expedition to Montana to obtain specimens for the National Museum of Natural History before bison went extinct in North America.[2] A census of the animals known to exist in captivity on January 1, 1889, showed 256 specimens in the United States and abroad.[2]

One contemporary writer notes that a number of scholars consider Extermination to be "the first important text of the American wildlife conservation movement".[5]