On March 18th 1877:The Battle of Yellow House Canyon took place near present-day Lubbock, Texas. It was a battle between a force of Comanches and Apaches and a group of bison hunters. It was the final battle of the Buffalo Hunters' War, and was the last major fight between non-Natives and Native Americans on the High Plains of Texas. On February 1, 1877, Marshall Sewell discovered a herd of buffalo, and after setting up station, picked the animals off one by one with his rifle before running out of ammunition. Black Horse witnessed this, and with his warriors surrounded the hunter on his way back to camp and killed him for his senseless slaughter of the buffalo. In retaliation, local buffalo hunters attacked the Comanche and Apache camp, killing 21 and wounding another 20+ people. During the 19th century bison were relentlessly killed and slaughtered by the US Army, commercial agents, and others in an attempt to starve Native peoples and open land for cattle. The total number of bison killed is unknown, but some statistics paint a gruesome picture: one professional hunter killed 20,000 on his own, and commercial hide firms were killing between 2,000 to 100,000 bison PER DAY.
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