[spunkets]

"The mythology of the American Indian as some kind of heroic environmentalist is swill poured by do-gooders who never saw an Indian in the flesh (and likely wouldn’t have survived the experience if he or she had)."

Yeah, I don't do myths though.

"There are many accounts of Indians on hunts killing buffalo just for the tongues and leaving the rest of the carcass. "

The annual hunt was for the big numbers and the collections of resources, like the hide they made tepees, clothes, robes and furniture with, and the bones that were used for tools. I think the hunt for tongues was simply an excursion for fresh ceremonial meat.

"The only time the whole animal was used was when the village (either stationary or on the move) was nearby."

Right, but they followed the migrations.

"The white buffalo hunters always took the hides (that’s primarily what they killed the bufffalo for), and some of the meat."

the primary reason the whites killed the buffalo in great numbers is because the US Army wanted the native's resources destroyed. The rest was decided by those that did the job.

[ought-six]

Ceremonial meat? Give me a break. The tongue was a favored and choice cut. It had nothing to do with ceremony, and everything to do with taste. The only truly ceremonial cut was the heart.

And, as for the so-called “annual hunt,” you make it sound like they went out for a month or so and hunted, much like we hunt deer nowadays. The plains tribes such as the Sioux and the Cheyenne and the Arapaho (just to name a handful) followed the buffalo herds, so it wasn’t so much an “annual hunt” but a perpetual hunt until winter made logistics unmanageable(they also went after antelope, elk, deer, etc.; however, one of their main staples was dog).