How did the destruction of bison herds impact native americans?

When the bison were exterminated from North America, indigenous populations lost an inch of height in just a generation.

Before the bison disappeared, the native people living in the plains were among the tallest in the world.

They didn't diversify their work from a single resource, the researchers said, because the bison pretty much supplied them with everything they needed. They were at least as well-off as European colonists at the time.

In just a generation, the height of the Native American people who depended on bison dropped by an inch or more, as measured by physical anthropologist Franz Boas, who collected data on the height, gender and age of over 15,000 Native Americans between 1889 and 1919.

The drop in height wasn't as steep for women as it was for men - - perhaps because traditional women's skills, like making clothing - - were more adaptable to new locations and animals. While men's traditional skills could have transferred to cattle ranching, government regulations forced people onto reservations where that was not an option