Politicians, Naturalists, and Artists in the New Nation, 1776–1839 31
Document 27: Meriwether Lewis on the Slaughter of Buffaloes (1804-1806)
In their expedition to find a practical route to the Pacific Ocean (the fabled Northwest Passage) and, simultaneously,
to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase, Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
traveled up the Missouri River to its source, across the Great Divide in the Rocky Mountains, and then down the
Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean. The purposes of this first official U.S. expedition and first official survey of
some of the nation’s resources were commercial, political, and scientific—to acquire data about the geographic
features of the land, Indian life and culture, and the flora and fauna west of the Missouri. One of Lewis’s
conclusions was that much of the land through which they had passed was unsuitable for intensive farming.
Lewis took note in his journals of the great diversity of Indian cultures and commented on variations in diet,
housing, and farming, fishing, and hunting techniques. In this selection, Lewis describes an Indian method of
hunting bison without employing a horse, gun, or even a bow and arrow. Use of the buffalo jump technique,
which enabled Indians to kill 100 to 200 animals at a time, had little impact on the bison population compared
with the massive slaughters that the whites were able to carry out using firearms, horses, and horse-drawn vehicles.today we passed on the Stard. side the
remains of a vast many mangled carcases of
Buffalow which had been driven over a preci-
pice of 120 feet by the Indians and perished;
the water appeared to have washed away a part
of this immence pile of slaughter and still their
remained the fragments of at least a hundred
carcases they created a most horrid stench. in
this manner the Indians of the Missouri distroy
vast herds of buffaloe at a stroke; for this purposeof existence contained in this spot of earth,
with ample food and ample room to expand in,
would fill millions of worlds in the course of a
few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious all
pervading law of nature, restrains them within
the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the
race of animals shrink under this great restrictive
law. And the race of man cannot, by any efforts of
reason, escape from it. Among plants and animals
its effects are waste of seed, sickness, and prema-
ture death. Among mankind, misery and vice.
B. James Madison to Edward Everett,
November 26, 1823
That the rate of increase in the population of the
U.S. is influenced at the same time by their political
& social condition is proved by the slower increase
under the vicious institutions of Spanish America
where Nature was not less bountiful. Nor can it be
doubted that the actual population of Europe wd be
augmented by such reforms in the systems as would
enlighten & animate the efforts to render the funds
of subsistence more productive. We see everywhere
in that quarter of the Globe, the people increasing in
number as the ancient burdens & abuses have yielded
to the progress of light & civilization....
Mr. Malthus has certainly shewn much
ability in his illustrations & applications of the
principle he assumes, however much he may have
erred in some of his positions. But he has not all
the merit of originality which has been allowed
him. The principle was adverted to & reasoned
upon, long before him, tho’ with views & appli-
cations not the same with his. The principle is
indeed inherent in all the organized beings on
the Globe, as well of the animal as the vegetable
classes; all & each of which when left to them-
selves, multiply till checked by the limited fund of
their pabulum, or by the mortality generated by an
excess of their numbers.Source: A. Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the
Principle of Population, ed. Philip Appleman (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1976), pp. 18, 19-20. B. Saul K. Padover, ed.,
The Complete Madison: His Basic Writings (New York:
Harper, 1953), p. 322.