The slaughter of the buffalo was not part of some larger American imperial plan to subjugate Indians; nor did it necessarily doom Indian peoples, although it certainly hurt them. On the Southern Plains, the Comanches had already shifted to a pastoralism that relied on horses and cattle as well as bison. But buffalo had a religious and cultural significance for both nomads and agriculturalists on the Great Plains that led the tribes to hunt even after hunts became both meager and dangerous.
