Buffalo Hunt
by Peter Ogden
Title
Buffalo Hunt
Artist
Peter Ogden
Medium
Painting - Oil On Canvas
Description
This is a restored copy of Buffalo Hunt, a circa 1898 oil on canvas painting by American painter Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, 1852-1917.
Before the introduction of horses, bison were herded into large chutes made of rocks and willow branches and trapped in a corral called a buffalo pound and then slaughtered or stampeded over cliffs, called buffalo jumps. Both pound and jump archaeological sites are found in several places in the U.S. and Canada. In the case of a jump, large groups of people would herd the bison for several miles, forcing them into a stampede that drove the herd over a cliff.
Horses taken from the Spanish were well-established in the nomadic hunting cultures by the early 1700s, and indigenous groups once living east of the Great Plains moved west to hunt the larger bison population. Intertribal warfare forced the Cheyennes to give up their cornfields at Biesterfeldt village and eventually cross west of the Missouri and become the well-known horseback buffalo hunters. In addition to using bison for themselves, these indigenous groups also traded meat and robes to village-based tribes.
Lakota winter count of American Horse, 1817–1818: "The Oglalas had an abundance of buffalo meat and shared it with the Brulés, who were short of food". A bison skin on a frame designates plenty of meat.
A good horseman could easily lance or shoot enough bison to keep his tribe and family fed, as long as a herd was nearby. The bison provided meat, leather, and sinew for bows.
Uploaded
April 29th, 2020
Embed
Share
Comments
There are no comments for Buffalo Hunt. Click here to post the first comment.