George Catlin 1796 - 1872

George Quimby, Indians of the Western Frontier: Paintings of George Catlin, Chicago, Illinois, 1954, pp. 54-55
William H. Truettner, The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin's Indian Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1979, IG. 409
George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians written during Eight Years' Travel (1832–1839) amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America. 2 vols., New York, 1973, pl. 79, Portfolio pl. 9

This dramatic and chaotic hunting scene is among the most dynamic of Catlin's canvases. Buffalo held as much fascination for Catlin's eastern audiences as the Indians themselves: twelve of the twenty-five lithographed plates in his 1844 North American Indian Portfolio portrayed buffalo or buffalo hunting. The artist also highlighted their place in his traveling Indian Gallery. A promotional broadside from 1838 announced that the exhibition comprised "Three Hundred & Thirty Portraits & Numerous other Paintings ... collected from 38 Tribes ... also, Four Paintings representing the Annual Religious Ceremony of the Mandans, ... a Series of One Hundred Landscape Views, ... and a Series of Twelve Buffalo Hunting Scenes."

Catlin offers a vivid narrative of the Buffalo hunt depicted here his Letters and Notes on the ... North American Indians. "The Minatarees ... are bold and fearless in the chase also, and in their eager pursuits of the bison, or buffaloes, their feats are such as to excite the astonishment and admiration of all who behold them. Of these scenes I have witnessed many since I came into this country, and amongst them all, nothing have I seen to compare with one to which I was an eye-witness a few mornings since.

"[W]e soon descried at a distance, a fine heard of buffaloes grazing, when a halt and a council were ordered, and the mode of attack agreed upon. I had armed myself with my pencil and my sketch-book onl, and consequently took my position generally in the rear, where I could see and apprehend every manoeuvre.

"The plan of attack, which in this country is familiarly called a 'surround,' was explicitly agreed upon, and the hunters who were all mounted on their 'buffalo horses' and armed with bows and arrows or long lances, divided into two columns, taking opposite directions, and drew themselves gradually around the herd at a mile or more distance from them; thus forming a circle of horsemen at equal distances apart, who gradually closed in upon them with a moderate pace, at a signal given. The unsuspecting herd at length 'got the wind' of the approaching enemy and fled in a mass in the greatest confusion. ... [T]he horseman had closed in from all directions, forming a continuous line around them. ... I had rode up in the rear and occupied an elevated position at a few rods distance, from which I could ... survey from my horse's back, the nature and progress of the grand mêleé.

"In this grand turmoil, a cloud of dust was soon raised, which in parts obscured the throng where the hunters were galloping their horses around and driving the whizzing arrows or their long lances to the hearts of these noble animals; which in many instances, becoming infuriated with deadly wounds in their sides, erected their shaggy manes over their blood-shot eyes and furiously plunged forwards at the sides of their assailants' horses, sometimes goring them to death at a lunge, and putting their dismounted riders to flight for their lives; sometimes their dense crowd was opened, and the blinded horsemen, too intent on their prey amidst the cloud of dust, were hemmed and edged in amidst the crowding beasts, over whose backs they were obliged to leap for security, leaving their horses to the fate that might await them. ... (Letters 1:199–200).

In a May 1837 letter to O'Fallon that recalled this extraordinary scene, Catlin tersely noted, "300 killed in 15 minutes, with arrows and spears in my presence, not a gun fired."

Truettner writes that the O'Fallon painting is less detailed than its counterpart in the Smithsonian, and while there is some legitimacy to this observation, his conclusion that the Smithsonian canvas was the first painted is not necessarily valid.  Based on what is known about Catlin's method of painting, it is very difficult to establish priority between two canvases of the same subject. Catlin could have painted two versions of the same subject on the same occasion, as Truettner himself considers is the case with the Smithsonian and the former University of Pennsylvania versions of Keokuk. Even more likely is that Catlin might have produced two studio canvases from a single "shorthand" portrait taken in the field. In at least one instance, Catlin himself claimed (in Life Amongst the Indians) that he gave his "original" canvas to its subject, the Mandan girl Mink. John C. Ewers stated that Catlin "copied and recopied his own works in pencil, watercolors, and oils. Consequently many renderings of the same subject, in Catlin's own hand, may be found in other museums and libraries, some of them more carefully delineated than the hastily executed original paintings." In discussing Catlin's remarkable productivity in 1832, Truettner himself reminds his readers that "we must remember that Catlin took no more than a brief likeness in the field" (p. 23).

The O'Fallon version of "Buffalo chase, a surround by the Hidatsa" is highly emblematic of Catlin's field technique. It is less finished, certainly, than the Smithsonian painting, but not really less detailed: the elements of the composition of the two works are essentially identical, right down to the buffalo fleeing to the left, it eyes covered by a buffalo robe thrown over its horns by a pursuing brave. Fewer of the horses in the O'Fallon picture are white, but that is the only substantive difference between them, and the hurried, almost impressionistic brushwork of the O'Fallon painting give it an animation and immediacy lacking from the Smithsonian version.