George Catlin's American Buffalo

Author: Adam Duncan Harris
Co-Publisher: D. Giles Ltd.
Publication Date: 2013
Museum: SAAM
Pages: 124 pp.: Ill (60 color, 3 black-and-white)
ISBN: 978-1-907804-32-8
Hardcover

Artist George Catlin journeyed west five times in the 1830s, traversing the Great Plains and visiting more than 140 American Indian tribes. In hundreds of canvases, Catlin recorded the lifeways of Plains Indians, including illustrating massive herds of buffalo and their importance in daily life. In George Catlin’s American Buffalo, Adam Duncan Harris considers forty of Catlin’s paintings and the artist’s role as an early proponent of wilderness conservation and the national park idea, and how that advocacy remains relevant today—to the Great Plains, the buffalo, and land use.