Research Blog Post 3

While there are quite a few groupings even within just this more focused collection of secondary sources, I don't actually plan to discuss all of them in my research paper. My approach with this is more to simply put things in order and figure out where everything goes. One thing this mind map doesn't include is the broad topic of "Indians" and how they fit into these narratives, but Native Americans are so strongly tied to the story of the buffalo that nearly all of the secondary sources on here would have a line connected to that grouping.

In the process of making this mind map, I realized just how hard it is to narrow down which specific conversations these sources fit into. They're certainly all part of the broader conversations about the bison hunts in general, but at this level, it can be difficult to say "Military/govt impact" and "Euro-Americans, Europeans" are exactly separable, for example. They do involve different parts of the conversation but most sources touching on one also involve the other — many of these categories are very much other sides of the same coin.

Overall, I think the way so many of the sources here tie into multiple topics and conversations (even ones I didn't include in this specific mind map) is actually helpful. While grouping my sources into general and specific conversations is definitely helpful to visualize, something important I've discovered about this event as I've looked deeper is just how interconnected everything is. All of the wide and varied causes, effects, interactions, and more are tied together, even in just the portions of the phenomenon I'm focusing my research on. This mind map is a great visual representation of the kind of interconnectedness that I might want to also express in my paper.