Buffalo Boneyard (SOLD)

“Buffalo Boneyard”

For hundreds of years, the indigenous Comanche people roamed the Llano Estacada hunting the American Bison, which is commonly known as Buffalo. This rugged creature was their primary source of food, clothing, shelter, tools, and weapons. The Buffalo was their lifeblood.

But with the encroaching white settlers in Texas, overhunting and wasteful annihilation of the Buffalo caused their near extinction by the mid-1870s. Thousands, if not millions of Buffalo bones were shipped back East by rail and the “Lords of the Prairie” were no more.

This extinction of their very lifeblood caused the eventual defeat of the Comanches in a way that military force had never been effective. In 1875, Chief Quanah Parker led his starving, demoralized people to the reservation in surrender at Fort Sill, Indian Territory, which is now Oklahoma.

My painting, “Buffalo Boneyard” depicts Chief Parker amidst a scattering of Buffalo skulls with the last, lone Buffalo observing from an outcropping, high above them. How defiantly defeated he must have felt.

The 48”x48” piece is Acrylic on historic documents glued to the canvas. These 120-year-old documents are handwritten, duplicate abstract records from Parker County, Texas, which was named after Isaac Parker, the half-breed chief’s white captive mother’s uncle. These deeds conveyed lands once controlled by the Comanches, thus I have incorporated a relic of the event depicted into the artwork giving it an added layer of meaning and symbolism.

The painting is available for purchase. Please call or text Terry Browder at 325-669-6856.