From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition
Subject: Re: Humans as Omnivores (Was: vegetarian friend ate beef. -- lost 
	headaches.)
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 14:52:02 -0700

Dilworth wrote in message <3b0714a1$0$88184$6d5eacc5@news.infinet.com>...
>Plains Indians ate meat and used virtually every bit of the buffalo,
>including burning its dung for fires, its skin for clothing, and its
>bones for utensils. They only killed what they could use.  Prior to the
>white man's settling the plains, the buffalo herds stretched on for
>miles and miles.  The Indians barely made a dent in the herds.  The
>buffalo were practically eliminated when the pioneers started shooting
>them from trains for sport, and effectively wiped out the Indians'
>primary food source.  The carcasses were left to rot on the plains, as
>the skins were the only thing in fashion at the time.
>
>Isn't progress wonderful?
>
>Judy Dilworth, M.T. (ASCP)
>Microbiology


Isn't political correctness wonderful.  The main reason plains Indians
used all of the buffalo is that buffalo were hard to kill and hard to
come by for spear-wielding horsemen. As soon as the plains Indians
acquired firearms there are several accounts of them shooting buffalo
only for the tongue meat, leaving the rest to rot. The idea that Indians
were somehow natural conservationists is revisionist rubbish.

No, I'm not claiming that the Indians wiped out the buffalo. They
didn't get a chance to, as white men did it for skins, tongues, and
as a deliberate policy of war against the Indians. That is
also true.