The Bison and the Cow: Eating Animals in the Time of Extinction

John Levi Barnard’s paper considers the entwined histories of the bison and the cow within the contexts of US imperial expansion and industrialization. This story is typically framed—as in the writings of Owen Wister,... [ view full abstract ]

John Levi Barnard’s paper considers the entwined histories of the bison and the cow within the contexts of US imperial expansion and industrialization. This story is typically framed—as in the writings of Owen Wister, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Upton Sinclair—as one of displacement, with the bison’s eradication paving the way for industrial-scale cattle ranching and meat production. While this narrative facilitates what has become a conventional distinction between the bison as charismatic environmental icon and the cow as commodity within an economy of animal capital, Barnard’s paper unsettles this distinction by focusing on both animals as food. While the bison initially provided sustenance for pioneer trappers and later railroad laborers, its eradication was not primarily tied to its consumption; by contrast, since its near extinction at the end of the nineteenth century, the bison’s incorporation into the business and culture of American meat production has been the primary mode of its survival as a species. In this regard, while it offers a compelling narrative of successful recovery from the brink of extinction, the bison ironically participates in the same globally expanding system of animal food production that now drives both climate breakdown and mass extinction on a planetary scale.