On this day in 1874, Harper’s Weekly ran the above cartoon. As recently as mid century, bison, roaming in herds across the continent’s midsection, had numbered somewhere between 30 and 200 million. By 1874, though, many observers assumed the animals, along with the Plains Indians who depended on them for survival, would soon disappear from the American scene, a species and a race vanishing because of the impact of industrialization and white settlement throughout the West.

Buffalo robes became a hot commodity in the 1850s, when settlers, pouring into Kansas Territory, began hunting bison for sport. But it was the arrival of the railroad — it always is in Western history, isn’t it? — following the Civil War, that pushed the species toward the tipping point. The railroads needed to feed workers who laid their tracks. And market hunters were happy to provide relatively cheap bison meat. At the same time, more railroads meant more settlers in the region, better access to eastern markets, and greater demand than ever for hides. Eventually, the railroads also realized that the bison themselves were a tourist attraction. And riders marveled at the great, shaggy beasts and sometimes shot them from trains.

Bison robes were prized for their durability and their warmth, qualities that made them especially useful in the West. Then, starting early in the 1870s, tanneries in the United States and Europe began using bison hides for leather. Because of this new commercial application for the animals’ skins, coupled with the widespread availability of more accurate rifles, the slaughter accelerated. By the mid 1870s, the bison had largely disappeared from their range on the southern plains.

In 1871, R. C. McCormick, a delegate to congress from the Arizona Territory, introduced legislation to protect the bison. Like the animals themselves, his bill died. McCormick, undeterred, tried again the following year, lobbying his colleagues by showing gruesome images of piles of bison carcasses, stripped of their hides, rotting in the sun. Finally, in 1874, congress passed legislation protecting the animals. President Grant, though, listened to his old friend and trusted adviser, General William T. Sherman, who insisted that the destruction of the bison would hasten the end of the Indian wars in the West. With the buffalo gone, Sherman argued, the Plains Indians would be forced to assimilate; they would have to embrace sedentary agriculture. Grant vetoed the bill. The hunt continued.

A decade later, just a few hundred bison, a small herd located near Yellowstone National Park, were still alive in the United States. Somewhere, Kevin Costner just shed a tear. Or maybe he thought of a great idea for a sequel.