The population of bison, North America's signature charismatic mammal, went from around 60 million in 1800 to just 300 by the dawn of the 20th century. Therein lies one hell of a story, told startlingly well by Ken Burns in his two-part series The American Buffalo.
Burns, North America's signature documentarian, is famous for taking huge swings at mighty subjects: baseball, the Civil War, jazz, Vietnam, and so forth. But this time, by focusing more tightly on a smaller topic and using a lighter-than-usual interpretative touch, he lets viewers reach an infuriating conclusion on their own. This marvelous beast was hunted to extinction by the rapacious appetites of westward expansion and the Industrial Revolution, yes; but the genocide was also understood at the time as the sadly necessary cost of completing the permanent subjugation of Native Americans.
