Catlin and an Indian guide, covered in wolf skins and with weapons at the ready, creep up on a herd of buffalo. The artist painted several versions of this theme, inspired by his lament that “the poor buffaloes have their enemy man, besetting and besieging them at all times of the year and in all the modes that man…has been able to devise for their destruction. They struggle in vain to evade his deadly shafts.”