They furnished all the means of livelihood to the tribes of Horse Indians, and to the curious population of French Metis, or Half-breeds, on the Red River, as well as to those dauntless and archtypical wanderers, the white hunters and trappers.
Their numbers slowly diminished, but the decrease was very gradual until after the Civil War.

They were not destroyed by the settlers, but by the railways and the skin hunters.
After the ending of the Civil War, the work of constructing trans-continental railway lines was pushed forward with the utmost vigor.

These supplied cheap and indispensable, but hitherto wholly lacking, means of transportation to the hunters; and at the same time the demand for buffalo robes and hides became very great, while the enormous numbers of the beasts, and the comparative ease with which they were slaughtered, attracted throngs of adventurers.

The result was such a slaughter of big game as the world had never before seen; never before were so many large animals of one species destroyed in so short a time.
Several million buffaloes were slain.

In fifteen years from the time the destruction fairly began the great herds were exterminated.