Buffalo Hunt, Under the White Wolf Skin, plate 13 from the "North American Indian Portfolio"

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Artist/Maker George Catlin (American, 1796 – 1872)

Publisher James Ackerman (American)

Date1845

MediumColor lithograph on paper

DimensionsComposition: 13 11/16 × 18 5/16 in. (34.7 × 46.5 cm) Sheet: 15 1/2 × 22 1/8 in. (39.4 × 56.2 cm)

Credit LineBequest of Samuel Hopkins Adams, Class of 1891

Object number1959.116

Not on view

DescriptionOf the White Wolf and its habits I have given an account in Plate No. 10; and although, as I have there said, these animals live chiefly on the flesh of the buffalo, they are often seen in large bands freely intermingling with the grazing herds, which their sagacity prevents them from attacking where there are numbers together, able and pugnacious enough to protect each other from any attacks by their canine companions. The buffaloes are very sagacious, and a sense of danger induces them to congregate in numerous herds for mutual protection. They are aware of their own superiority in combined force, and seem then to have no dread of the wolf, allowing him to sneak amidst their ranks, apparently like one of their own family. The Indian, superior in craft to both of these, and too poor, in many cases, to be the owner of a horse, has been driven to the stratagem represented in this plate, of profiting by these circumstances, by placing himself under the skin of a white wolf, with his weapons in hand, in which plight he often creeps over the level prairies (where there is no object to conceal him) to close company with the unsuspecting herd, and with deliberate and certain aim, brings down the fleetest and fattest of them. In this plate is a just representation of the level prairies which often occur for many miles together, affording to the eye of a traveller, in all directions, a complete type of the ocean in a calm; green, near and around him, but changing to blue in the distance; without tree or shrub, or slightest undulation to break the perfect line of the surrounding horizon.

Collections

American Art

Additional Details

Alternate Titles North American Indian Portfolio

Provenance 1959: Hamilton College, by bequest of Samuel Hopkins Adams.

Inscribed "Catlin del." at lower left in typeset; "No.13. / BUFFALO HUNT, UNDER THE WHITE WOLF SKIN. / Published at James Ackerman's Lithographic Rooms, 304 Broadway N.Y." at lower center in typeset; "FUXSS" on verso at left center in pencil; "HC 112" on verso at lower left in pencil.