Buffalo Dance 1844

George Catlin made this print titled "Buffalo Dance" sometime in the 19th century. Catlin spent much of the 1830s traveling among the Plains tribes, documenting their rituals and way of life. Here, Catlin depicts a ceremony intended to call the buffalo closer to the tribe, ensuring a successful hunt. The dancers wear buffalo heads and tails to transform into the animal, and the circle they form is a sign of the interconnectedness of life. Note the way the print flattens the image and uses generalized figures, giving us a romanticized, rather than documentary, image. Catlin hoped to profit from this art, by displaying it in a “Native American Gallery,” and selling books that described what he saw. But his efforts were always controversial. Some people saw him as an insightful recorder of Native American culture; others saw him as exploiting it for his own gain. To gain a better understanding of Catlin's motivations, we must compare his prints to other accounts of Native American life, as well as the history of American expansion.