Pawnee Indians Approaching Buffalo

Pawnee Indians Approaching Buffalo from the 1861-69 period is a late Catlin depicting one of his most characteristic subjects: the buffalo hunt, which was the central economic and spiritual activity of the Plains tribes. Catlin had witnessed and painted buffalo hunts during his fieldwork in the 1830s, and this late version is likely derived from earlier sketches and memories rather than from direct observation. The Pawnee were one of the most important Plains tribes, and their buffalo hunting culture was already being transformed by the near-extinction of the buffalo that would be completed by the 1880s.

Catlin's buffalo hunt paintings are among the most important visual documents of Plains Indian culture because they record an activity—the communal buffalo hunt—that was central to the economic, spiritual, and social life of the Plains tribes and that was being destroyed by the systematic extermination of the buffalo. The Pawnee Indians Approaching Buffalo from the 1860s is a record of a hunt that would soon become impossible, making it both an ethnographic document and a memorial.

Pawnee Indians Approaching Buffalo is Catlin documenting the activity that defined Plains Indian culture: the communal buffalo hunt, recorded in the 1860s as the buffalo were being systematically exterminated. The painting is simultaneously an ethnographic document and a memorial—a record of a hunt that would soon become impossible.