I saw on television a film based on contemporary photographs about the virtual extinction of the American bison, often dubbed buffalo, which was hunted down for paltry gain in a few short years as the railways ploughed their way west. The prairie was left littered with reeking carcasses. The wholesale slaughter not only took the livelihood away from the American Indians, but also broke their hearts. The white man’s ways made no sense to them. Although sentimental in places, the story shook me to the core. But then I remembered the story about the swift extinction of the American mammoth some ten-thousand years ago. The fabulous beast was hunted down for paltry gain in a few short generations by the red man’s very ancestors.