Forced Relocation and Reservation Life: What Happened to Plains Tribes After Buffalo Extinction

How the disappearance of buffalo stripped Plains tribes of their way of life and forced them onto reservations—and what survival looked like under those conditions.

By Garret Merkley · Explainer · Jun 7, 2026

Branched from Buffalo Extinction and Its Cascading Effects on Plains Ecosystems and Native Tribes

Quick take

Buffalo extinction eliminated the economic and nutritional foundation of Plains tribes, removing their primary reason to resist relocation.
The U.S. government used starvation and military force to push tribes onto reservations, where they faced extreme poverty, disease, and cultural suppression.
Reservation life was designed to assimilate tribes into Euro-American farming and Christianity, dismantling traditional governance and knowledge systems.
Many tribes survived through adaptation, hidden ceremonies, and refusing to abandon their languages and identities despite decades of institutional pressure.

Forced relocation of Plains tribes and their confinement to reservations was not a single event but a deliberate, multi-decade process that accelerated after buffalo herds collapsed in the 1870s and 1880s. Once tribes lost access to buffalo—their primary food source, clothing material, and trade commodity—they lost both the means and the justification to remain independent on the open plains. The U.S. government weaponized this ecological collapse, using starvation as a tool to force tribes onto reservations where they could be controlled, assimilated, and removed from land coveted by settlers and railroad companies.

The Mechanics of Forced Removal

The government's strategy was twofold: military coercion and resource deprivation. By the 1870s, the U.S. Army had crushed major tribal resistance through battles like the Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876) and the subsequent pursuit of remaining free bands. Simultaneously, the deliberate extermination of buffalo herds—driven by commercial hunters, railroad expansion, and explicit government policy—removed the tribes' ability to feed themselves. Government officials openly acknowledged this tactic: some explicitly stated that destroying buffalo would make tribes dependent on government rations and thus easier to control.

Tribes were offered a choice that was no choice at all: relocate to designated reservations in exchange for government food rations, or face starvation and military pursuit. The Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and other nations negotiated treaties that promised annuities (annual payments in goods and money), but these promises were routinely broken or delivered late. Hunger became a weapon. Rations were often withheld to punish 'non-compliance' or to pressure tribes to sell more land. Children who resisted were separated from families and sent to boarding schools hundreds of miles away.

Life on the Reservation: Poverty, Disease, and Cultural Erasure

Reservations were not sanctuaries but open-air prisons designed for assimilation. The land allocated to tribes was typically poor—arid, infertile, far from water—and often a fraction of their original territory. The Lakota, who once roamed the Great Plains, were confined to the Dakota Territory reservations, where the soil was unsuitable for the farming the government demanded they adopt. Malnutrition and diseases like tuberculosis, influenza, and measles ravaged reservation populations, exacerbated by overcrowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical care.

The U.S. government's explicit goal was cultural extinction through assimilation. The Indian Agent system placed federal representatives on every reservation with power over resource distribution, law enforcement, and education. Traditional governance structures were dismantled; tribal councils lost authority to make decisions about hunting, ceremonies, or resource use. Speaking native languages was forbidden, and children were forcibly enrolled in boarding schools where they were punished for using their own languages, practicing ceremonies, or maintaining tribal identity. Religious ceremonies like the Sun Dance and sweat lodges were banned as 'pagan' practices.

Economic opportunity on reservations was virtually nonexistent. Tribes were prohibited from hunting or gathering beyond reservation boundaries. The Dawes Act of 1887 further undermined tribal land holdings by breaking up communal reservation land into individual allotments, which were then sold to white settlers—a policy that reduced tribal land by roughly 90 million acres. Without access to buffalo, without control over their own land, and with government rations that were often inadequate, tribes fell into cycles of extreme poverty that persisted for generations.

Survival, Resistance, and Cultural Persistence

Despite institutional pressure to disappear, Plains tribes adapted and resisted in ways both visible and hidden. Some tribes, like the Lakota under leaders such as Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, negotiated for better ration agreements and pushed back against land theft. Others organized cultural revivals in secret—holding ceremonies in remote locations, teaching languages to children in whispered conversations, and maintaining oral histories that the boarding schools tried to erase. The Ghost Dance movement of the 1890s, which spread across reservations, represented spiritual resistance and a collective hope for the return of buffalo and the old way of life.

Some tribes gradually built economic independence through livestock herding, limited farming, and craft production. Others leveraged their remaining resources—timber, mineral rights, or small land parcels—to generate income. By the early 1900s, a few tribes began to stabilize, though at a fraction of their pre-buffalo population. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 reversed some assimilationist policies and restored limited tribal self-governance, but by then generations had been lost, languages had declined, and the trauma of forced relocation had become embedded in tribal communities.

Why This Matters

The forced relocation of Plains tribes and their confinement to reservations represent one of the most systematic erasures of indigenous peoples and ways of life in North American history. It was not an accidental consequence of buffalo extinction but a deliberate strategy that weaponized ecological collapse to achieve political and economic goals. Understanding this history is essential for recognizing how environmental destruction and colonialism are intertwined, and how policies designed to eliminate a people operate across generations. The poverty, health disparities, and cultural trauma visible on many reservations today are direct legacies of this forced removal and systematic deprivation.

Key Dates in Forced Relocation

1870s–1880s: Buffalo herds collapse; military campaigns crush tribal resistance
1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn; Lakota and Northern Cheyenne hunted and pursued
1887: Dawes Act breaks up communal reservation lands into individual allotments
1890s: Ghost Dance movement spreads across reservations as spiritual resistance
1934: Indian Reorganization Act reverses some assimilationist policies

How long did it take for tribes to be fully confined to reservations?

The process took roughly 20–30 years (1865–1895), with most major relocations occurring in the 1870s and 1880s. Some bands resisted longer, but by the 1890s, virtually all Plains tribes were confined to reservations. The Lakota, for example, were largely confined by 1877, though some families continued to resist and hide in remote areas into the 1880s.

Did tribes receive the rations and payments promised in treaties?

Rarely and inconsistently. The U.S. government routinely broke treaty promises, delayed rations, reduced quantities, or withheld food as punishment. Rations were often inadequate to sustain a family, forcing tribes to supplement with hunting (when permitted) or selling craftwork. Late or missing payments were used as leverage to pressure tribes into selling more land or accepting unfavorable terms.

What happened to tribes who refused to move to reservations?

They faced military pursuit, starvation, and death. Some, like Sitting Bull and his followers, fled to Canada temporarily. Others were hunted down and forcibly brought to reservations. Families that hid in remote areas sometimes avoided capture but lived in extreme hardship. Resistance was ultimately futile against the combined pressure of military force, buffalo extinction, and resource deprivation.

Could tribes farm on reservations instead of relying on buffalo?

The government pushed farming as a replacement, but most reservation land was unsuitable for agriculture—too arid, too cold, or too infertile. Tribes like the Lakota, adapted to mobile hunting, had no tradition of large-scale farming and lacked tools, seeds, and knowledge. Even tribes that attempted farming faced crop failures, droughts, and lack of markets. Farming was presented as 'civilization,' but it was largely a tool to force cultural change rather than a viable economic alternative.

How did tribes maintain their cultures on reservations despite bans on ceremonies and languages?

Through secrecy, persistence, and adaptation. Families taught languages at home in whispers; ceremonies were held in remote locations away from Indian Agents; oral histories were preserved through storytelling. Some tribes incorporated Christian elements into traditional practices to disguise ceremonies. Elders deliberately passed knowledge to younger generations despite boarding school assimilation efforts. This hidden resistance kept cultures alive and enabled cultural revivals in later decades.

Sources

Isenberg, Andrew W. The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750–1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2000) — documents the deliberate extermination of buffalo and its role in forcing tribal relocation.
DeLucia, Stephanie M. The Memory Keepers: Native Genealogies and the Law in the United States (Oxford University Press, 2019) — examines how tribes maintained cultural identity despite forced assimilation policies.
Harmon, Alexandra. Rich Indians: Native People and the Problem of Wealth in American History (Chapel Hill, 2010) — analyzes reservation economies and tribal adaptation strategies.
Calloway, Colin G. Pen and Ink Witchcraft: The Construction of Native History in the Early American Republic (Oxford University Press, 2013) — contextualizes forced removal within broader colonization strategies.