Westward Ho! Buffalo! American art as a Catalyst for Change

Albert Bierstadt’s painting, Last of the Buffalo, painted in 1891is known to have precipitated the first official census of America’s last remaining buffalo. This paper will critically examine the role of American artists such as Bierstadt, George Catlin, Charles Bird King, and Frederic Remington who during the period of America’s westward expansion, created both realistic and romantic works that depicted the buffalo in various contexts. Prior to European settlement, up to 30 million buffalo ranged more widely across the plains and the prairies than any other native large herbivore. The Homestead Act accelerated settlement of U.S. western territory by allowing any American, to put in a claim for up to 160 free acres of federal land. As a result, buffalo hunting became the chief industry with a systematic reduction of the plains herds. By1850 only 551 buffalo remained.

As contemporary journalists of their day, reeling from the Civil War, and the antebellum years of social and cultural change, these artists played a pivotal role in questioning and then revealing the exploitation and near extinction of the buffalo by white settlers. This paper will examine the ways in which representations of the buffalo by American artists were disseminated to the public -and how their art prevented the buffalo’s extinction by inspiring conservationists and Congress to enact laws to make buffalo hunting illegal by 1894. Today’s free roaming buffalo continue to benefit from the silent courage of artists whose works traverse boundaries in subject matter and technique.