Existing comment:
George Catlin
Buffalo Chase (Month of the Teton River), 1865-70
Aware that Native Americans were at ever-increasing risk from war, forced relocation, and newly introduced diseases, Catlin traveled to the western frontier in the 1830s to record their appearances and customs. For seven years, the self-taught artist and amateur ethnologist visited numerous tribes and painted nearly five hundred portraits and genre scenes. After returning east, he found widespread success by touring his paintings in the United States and Europe, reproducing images as prints, and publishing his travel accounts in a series of books.
Catlin's Buffalo Chase, based on an earlier, 1832 painting, pictures the kind of high drama he witnessed on the South Dakota plains. Hunting with the Sioux, the artist observed that the naturally timid bison might unexpectedly turn and attack with its sharp horns. "The finest horses are often destroyed," he noted in his journal, "but the Indian, with his superior sagacity and dexterity, generally finds some effective mode of escape." |