Settlers stick together.

Settlers always know what they are doing, of course; it was why they worked so hard to slaughter the buffalo: they wanted to kill indigeneity, not just individual indigenous people. A people who marked time and history by the buffalo could not survive in their collectivity without it. And so, as “Plenty Coups” of the Crow nation put it,

“When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.”

His point was that without the buffalo—the object on and through which his people existed and made collective meaning—their history could not continue. Individuals could survive, as he had, but the people had (arguably) come to an end.

from https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/buffalo-skulls/