Unlike humans, owls don't spend all day checking their social media, eating junk food, or pursuing other self destructive habits. So who are we to insult their intelligence?
It's not the natives that hunted them that way, it's the american settlers that wanted to kill the native tribes to have their land. Bison was one of the main source of food for the natives, there would no reason for them to massacre these animals.
Archeological evidence dates buffalo jumps as far back as 10,000 BCE. The reason to kill en masse was to reduce the effect of training the bison to further avoid humans and thus make hunting harder. Although this method of hunting had largely ended with the introduction of horses, it was still practiced occasionally as late as 1800 AD.
Europeans hardly ever used buffalo jumps, since they had plenty of guns and ammo, which was enough to nearly wipe them out completely by 1900.
EDIT: It's probably more correct to say that the practice had completely ended by 1800, as it seems that the accounts from then were not first hand. Anyway, the point is, there were some 50 million bison on the plains around 1800, and only a few thousand remained by 1900.
Opossums are an order of American marsupial. The only species in Canada and the US is the Virginia opossum, which usually has its "o" dropped and is referred to as just a "possum."
You might also be thinking of the Australian animal that is also called a "possum," which is not very closely related to opossums but looks similar enough that it was named after them.
Can you accept "flea" for the clue about disease carriers? Because that was the first thing I guessed (followed by mosquito... I was really only thinking about insects for that one)
kidding, kidding...
Europeans hardly ever used buffalo jumps, since they had plenty of guns and ammo, which was enough to nearly wipe them out completely by 1900.
EDIT: It's probably more correct to say that the practice had completely ended by 1800, as it seems that the accounts from then were not first hand. Anyway, the point is, there were some 50 million bison on the plains around 1800, and only a few thousand remained by 1900.
You might also be thinking of the Australian animal that is also called a "possum," which is not very closely related to opossums but looks similar enough that it was named after them.