The American West

In the eyes of the world, the West’s several deserts have become defining landscapes for the modern region. But one of them, the Chihuahuan Desert, has produced the only large public lands found anywhere in Texas. Therein lies a story that shapes a state. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Present on the continent for nearly half-a-million years, the American bison’s numbers and near perfect adaptation to the Great Plains made it one of the evolutionary marvels of Earth. For more than 10,000 years, Native people in the West had intertwined their lives with bison herds to create the longest sustained economies and religious traditions in American history. Then over two centuries of whirlwind change in Native America, the bison was suddenly and mysteriously gone from the wild. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As a native family of American animals, for more than five million years wolves of various kinds have been keystone predators of western ecologies. Before humans arrived they shaped the West more than any other mammal species. Numerous, nearly tame, and admired by Native people, wolves continued this role until the arrival of people from the Old World initiated a continent-wide war against wolves. While wolf pelts became a target of the western market hunt, into the early 20th century most wolves were destroyed by bounty hunters and “wolfers,” who trapped and poisoned hundreds of thousands of wolves at the behest of livestock associations and state governments. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Before 1850 the artist and naturalist John James Audubon was America’s most famous celebrity. His Birds of America was widely regarded as “the greatest monument ever erected by art to nature.” But like Thoreau, Audubon was also a witness to the growing destruction of wild America. That was particularly evident when he and his sons journeyed up the Missouri River in the early 1840s to finish Audubon’s book on the mammals of America. Stunned at the staggering diversity and abundance of wild creatures visible in the West, Audubon soon despaired at the wholesale (and to him) senseless destruction he saw, a disturbing insight into human nature on a continent Audubon loved and tried to preserve in paint and words. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Lewis & Clark saw the West in the first years of the 1800s it still preserved the healthy biodiversity of Native-managed ecologies in place for 10,000 years. Within thirty years, everything had changed. Americans arrived in the West with religious traditions that taught animals were created solely for human use. And they introduced an economic system that made western animals commodities in a global market, an economy that snagged Native people in the trade and created the first American millionaires. By 1840 ancient western ecologies evolved around sea otters, fur seals, beavers and many other species were collapsing in both the interior and on the coasts. For some the period produced romantic figures like the mountain men. Witnessing such destruction, however, even some of their peers saw the casual loss of the ancient West very differently. Thank you to our sponsor Velvet Buck. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts. YouTube, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Pandora, Amazon. MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips Check out more MeatEater's American History audio originals "The Long Hunters" and "Mountain Men" Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.