Buffalo |
North American buffalo once numbered 60 million. In mere decades after settlers, adventurers, explorers and commercial hunters appeared on the plains, the buffalo herds were reduced to a few million.
By the 1880s, the federal government mounted a concerted effort to exterminate the remaining buffalo in order to drive the Indians who depended on them onto reservations, opening the West for non-Native settlement.
Many artists publicized the slaughter and the devastating impact the demise of the buffalo had on Indian culture.
Artists of the 1800s and 1900s memorialized the hunt and the departed buffalo; today artists forecast their return. |
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William Robinson Leigh
The Buffalo Hunt
1947
Oil on Canvas. 78 1/8" x 126 1/4"
With great drama, Leigh painted Indians on horseback hunting buffalo, driving their prey over a "jump." Actually, this hunting method was abandoned after horses arrived on the plains in the 1500s. The technical precision of Leigh's animal paintings made him a popular western painter.
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Charles Marion Russell
A Game Country
March 4, 1917
Illustrated letter on paper, 11" x 8 1/2"
Charlie Russell wrote regularly to a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. Today he is appreciated almost as much for his illustrated letters as for his paintings and sculpture.
In 1929 his widow Nancy published his letters in a volume titled Good Medicine, with an introduction by Will Rogers. In his inscription to Nancy in the first numbered copy of the book, Rogers wrote, "He didn't know he was writing for all the ages, did he? He left us, Nancy, but he left us much." (Peter Hassrick, Charles M. Russell (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, in association with The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1989), 7.)
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Joseph Henry Sharp
Prayer to the Spirit of the Buffalo
1910
Oil on canvas, 30" x 40"
Sharp made his first trip west in 1883. He stopped briefly in Santa Fe, then went to the Pacific Northwest to sketch Indians of many tribes. Believing that the Indians of the Northwest were disappearing, he spent part of each year recording their culture.
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Artist(s) unknown (Dakota)
Painted Buffalo Hide Robe
1883
Buffalo hide, pigments, 82" x 69"
The geometric patterns and designs on this hide reveal an artist with a sophisticated understanding of line, rhythm, and balance. Traditionally, women in Plains cultures painted geometric designs, and men created images that told stories and realistically represented people and objects. This painting can be seen as both an abstract design and a realistic rendering of feathered war bonnets. The gender of the maker is not clear.
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Norman Rockwell
The Buffalo Hunt
1914
Oil on canvas, 20" x 32"
The spirit of the chase had seized him, and he rode recklessly into the great company of crowding buffaloes. This was the caption for The Buffalo Hunt, one of four paintings New York City artist Norman Rockwell made to illustrate a boys' novel, The Red Arrow (1915), by Elmer Russell.
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Henry Merwin Shrady
Elk Buffalo (Monarch of the Plains)
1901
Bronze, 23" x 32" x 12"
By the end of the nineteenth century, the North American buffalo was nearly extinct. Lakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull lamented, "A cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell... a death-wind for my people." Alarmed citizens protested the buffalo's slaughter, while artists like Henry Shrady paid tribute to these vanishing beasts
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