Artwork Details
- Title
- Buffalo Hunt
- Artist
- Founder
- Gorham Manufacturing Company
- Date
- modeled 1914-1916, copyrighted 1917
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 18 1⁄4 x 27 1⁄2 x 12 1⁄2 in. (46.4 x 69.9 x 31.8 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Jean and William M. (Oz) Osborne in memory of Eleanor Tufts and in honor of Alessandra Comini
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- bronze
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Animal — buffalo
- Figure male — full length
- Occupation — hunter
- Indian
- Animal — horse
- Object Number
- 2005.23.1
Artwork Description
The model for this sculpture was bronco buster Jackson Sundown (1863--1923, Wal-lam-wat-kain band of Nez Perce). When this expert horseman competed in rodeos or worked on his ranch, he wore wooly chaps, colorful shirts, and riding boots (see image at right). But when he modeled for Buffalo Hunt, he indulged sculptor Alexander Proctor's request to wear only a breechcloth and moccasins and ride without a saddle. Like an actor on stage, Sundown was performing a character type in a popular fantasy about the American West that Hollywood would later popularize through movies and television.
Label text from The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture November 8, 2024 -- September 14, 2025
This romantic and retrospective scene was modeled on rodeo champion Jackson Sundown (1863--1923). Sundown had served with his uncle Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (sometimes called Chief Joseph), a leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain band of Nez Perce, defending their land and people against attacks by the U.S. Calvary. Sundown once escaped after being wounded in battle by adroitly riding off the side of his horse and eluding his pursuers. He made his living breeding and raising horses and riding rodeo, eventually working from a ranch in Idaho where he hosted Alexander Proctor as the sculptor worked on this composition.
To stage this fictive scene, made long after the bison had been driven to near extinction, Proctor had Sundown repeatedly ride bareback wearing a breechcloth and moccasins. By contrast, Sundown typically wore wooly chaps, colorful shirts, and boots, his braided hair tied under his chin when competing in rodeos. Though inspired by Sundown's expert rodeo performances, Buffalo Hunt plays out a common fantasy of an Old West in which Indigenous peoples' roles in contemporary culture are denied and they are instead locked in an invented past.