Why were the great bison herds of the North American plains killed?

Killing the buffalo was a tool of genocide.

When I was a kid, I always imagined some dumb yahoos riding the trains shooting buffalo for fun. 
And I thought what idiots we have been to destroy the beauty of nature that sustains us.
When I was older I understood that it wasn't just a dumb action, it was evil...

The American Bison were killed to remove the food source of the indigenous population, the "indians".

TRADE: 
Certainly there was trade in killing and harvesting them for hides... though the animals were usually killed just for the hide, wasting the rest.

Researchers estimate that prairie bison alone numbered between 30 million and 200 million, while a woodland variant existed in smaller numbers.
By the 1870s, they were shipping hundreds of thousands of buffalo hides eastward each year: more than 1.5 million were packed aboard trains and wagons in the winter of 1872-73 alone.

GENOCIDE:
THE BUFFALO WAR: The Buffalo

To make matters worse for wild buffalo, some U.S. government officials actively destroyed bison to defeat their Native American enemies who resisted the takeover of their lands by white settlers. American military commanders ordered troops to kill buffalo to deny Native Americans an important source of food.

American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation - Introduction

The commercial killers, however, weren’t the only ones shooting bison. Train companies offered tourists the chance to shoot buffalo from the windows of their coaches, pausing only when they ran out of ammunition or the gun’s barrel became too hot. There were even buffalo killing contests. In one, a Kansan set a record by killing 120 bison in just 40 minutes. “Buffalo” Bill Cody, hired to slaughter the animals, killed more than 4,000 buffalo in just two years.

Some U.S. government officials even promoted the destruction of the bison herds as a way to defeat their Native American enemies, who were resisting the takeover of their lands by white settlers. One Congressman, James Throckmorton of Texas, believed that “it would be a great step forward in the civilization of the Indians and the preservation of peace on the border if there was not a buffalo in existence.” Soon, military commanders were ordering their troops to kill buffalo — not for food, but to deny Native Americans their own source of food. One general believed that buffalo hunters “did more to defeat the Indian nations in a few years than soldiers did in 50.” By 1880, the slaughter was almost over. Where millions of buffalo once roamed, only a few thousand animals remained. Soon, their numbers dwindled, with the largest wild herd — just a few hundred animals — sheltered in the isolated valleys of the newly created Yellowstone National Park.

More links:
buffalo
Bison or Buffalo & Native Americans
The Buffalo Harvest

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