“Kill every buffalo you can! Every buffalo dead is an Indian gone” (General Dodge). General Sherman is responsible for developing the strategy for conquering Plains Indians and to clear the plains for the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads by annihilating the buffalo population of the plains. On May 10, 1868, Sherman contacts General Sheridan and says, “as long as Buffalo are up on the Republican the Indians will go there. I think it would be wise to invite all the sportsmen … there this fall for a Grand Buffalo hunt, and make one grand sweep of them all. Until the Buffalo and consequent Indians are out [from between] the Roads we will have collisions and trouble” (Sheridan Papers, 1868). Lieutenant General John M. Schofield, commander of the Department of Missouri from 1869 to 1870, stated in his memoirs: “With my cavalry and combined artillery encamped in front, I wanted no other occupation in life than to ward off the savage and kill off his food until there should no longer be an Indian Frontier in our beautiful country” (Schofield, 1869). At the Medicine Lodge Treaty Council of 1867, the great Kiowa chief, Satanta, notes, “A long time ago this land belonged to our fathers but when I go up to the river I see a camp of soldiers, and they are cutting my wood down, or killing my buffalo. I don’t like that, and when I see it my heart feels like bursting with sorrow” (Smits, 1994, p. 321). In just two years over four million buffalo were slaughtered, and by the 1880s over 30 million buffalo had been slaughtered and buffalo were nearly exterminated.