You couldn't be more wrong. I know you've read some book (maybe two) about the Indian responsibility, but it's not accurate.
"Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for the sake of a lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo's are exterminated." General P. Sheridan
"Kill every buffalo you can,...every buffalo dead is an Indian gone." Colonel R.I. Dodge
The American Indian would take leaf branches and drag them behind themselves to cover their tracks in the woods, as it was their intention to leave the land as they had found it, without even their footprints disturbing the landscape. Yes, they hunted, but they did not create the extinctions.
There's documentation to support the theory that the buffalo were actually intentionally eliminated by "the White Man" to aid settlements and to destroy Indian populations.
http://www.american.edu/TED/ice/buffalo.htmhttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/sfeature/sf_interview.html#c
How did white settlers view the buffalo?
It became obvious that Indians and whites viewed the buffalo from differing points of view. Plains Indians had learned to hunt the buffalo skillfully with a bow and arrow, while the white professional hunter hired to supply meat to railroad crews used a rifle of long distance accuracy. While the Indians became dependent upon the buffalo, Anglo-American culture stressed the cultivation of the land as agrarians with less importance placed on the numerous buffalo. As a result, the buffalo was hunted for sport by the white professional hunters and sportsmen. In contrast, the American Indian of the West had developed a cultural importance on the buffalo as the center of ceremonial and daily life.
What is the difference between a buffalo and a bison?
Most people think that there is no difference between a buffalo and bison, but actually there is one. A "buffalo" can also refer to a water buffalo, and it is a term that describes a larger category of wild oxen. Bison more appropriately describes the North American buffalo, which has short horns, a heavy forequarter, a large head with a heavy mane. When Europeans first saw the bison, it is logical that they called it a buffalo that was similar to what they knew about in other parts of the world.
Is it true that the buffalo nearly became extinct?
It has been estimated that the West held as many as fifteen million to sixty million buffalo at the arrival of the white man. Even with the lowest estimate, the number was severely depleted as a result of the introduction of the transcontinental railroad to the Western homeland of the Plains Indian tribes. By the end of the 1870s, the buffalo was on its way to extinction with an alarmingly low number of less than 1,000 in the West by the end of the nineteenth century. Rapid American expansion in the West in less than fifty years caused catastrophic results for the great animal called the American bison. We're talking about an animal that was almost literally erased from this earth.
BTW, I'm part American Indian, so perhaps I'm "biased", but I also think that gives me better firsthand info.:) My Dad and Grandad could do amazing things in the "woods", including, hunting with virtually any weapon, tracking and riding horses bareback, to name a few. Dad was in the US Army Aircorps, WWII, flew over Normandy. Happy Thanksgiving.