Buffalo Blind

Oil on Canvas
20″ x 16″
$750
Contact to Purchase

Buffalo Camp
In the late 1870’s through the early 1880’s, from behind the man-made rock wall guarding a then wood covered cave, high on a hillside, sharpshooters used 45-120 Sharps rifles to decimate the buffalo population.  By 1883 the powerful beasts, once ranging over all that would become the United States were gone.  A good sharpshooter could kill about a hundred head a day and was paid 25 cents an ear.  The animals were skinned where they fell, and the hides left to dry on the banks of the Yellowstone, where steamboats gathered them in the spring.  With the slaughter of the buffalo the government felt the land was cleared for homesteaders’ cattle, and the Native Americans were driven to land allotted them.  Sadly, contrary to plan, Texans drove their cattle up here, over-grazed the native grasses, and high-tailed back home with the profits.