Ken Burns’ documentaries first came to my attention with his staggering work on the Vietnam War, surpassed only, in my opinion by the British 26 episode classic The World at War from 1973. Well, he did it again with the remarkable The Great American Buffalo.

There are so many standout moments and facts in this series. Firstly, the huge number of buffalo which lived on the Great Plains and second, the inevitable horrific destruction of these herds in hunting sprees by white Europeans and Americans which would decimate huge numbers of them for hats and coats in European cities.

And with the killings came the tragic end of the Native American Indians life as they knew for so long.

Burns brilliantly portrays the stark contrast between the Indians attitude to killing a buffalo for food and clothing and the wanton cruelty of mass shootings by hide hunters. The buffalo had such a spiritual connection with the tribes, the death of a single beast came from pre-hunting ceremonies asking for blessings and giving thanks to the post-killing celebration of the sacrifice which would provide a huge amount of food for a tribe as well as hides for keeping families warm. The buffalo were plentiful, thousands roaming across the Plains but as explorers reached the country and realised the riches to be had this would signal the beginning of capitalism and the end of a spiritual, land based way of life.

This was the largest destruction of a wild animal species in history, between 1800 and 1890 millions of buffalo were slaughtered, thousands for trophy hunting alone, many for their tongues for European elites dining halls. In 1870 some two million were killed on the southern plains in one year. In the 1500s it is estimated that thirty to sixty million bison roamed in North America, the majority on the Great Plains, today the population is around four hundred thousand thanks largely to a sustained programme of conservation. It’s an incredible tragedy in so many ways.

The documentary was written by Drayton Duncan, peppered with insightful interviews with both historians and modern day native Americans. It brilliantly balances the destruction of the buffalo with the demise of the American Indian tribes in the second equally shameful episode of American history from that period. There were so many famous names from that era, from Sitting Bull to Buffalo Bill to Theodore Roosevelt and none of these are lost on Burns.

This is a very important documentary in so many ways. For me it shows the beginning of the end for rural communities and people sharing a land with nature, when the dial truly turned up on humans ‘owning’ the planet and showing no regard for the consequences of their actions. The ignorance of the people who did this beggars belief and kudos to Burns for bringing it back to the screen.