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This work was influenced largely by the expressions in the eyes of the individuals in the two images chosen from the Schwemberger Photographs. They seem to show a resignation, a hopelessness, a helpless acceptance of the inevitability of things to come. The image of “the dying bull buffalo” comes from the earlier work of George Catlin who 70 years before Schwemberger, spent some 5 years (1832-1836) travelling among the Indian nations west of the Mississippi, recording with pen, pencil and paintbrush, all he could of their manners, customs and traditions before they were lost forever as the “frontier” advanced. He knew that with the onset of commercial buffalo hunting the Native American was doomed*.
The head of the golden eagle was chosen to connect the pieces of the picture, the golden eagle having played such an important role in many of the Native American rituals and religious practices as indeed it still does in some parts today, with for example, the surviving peoples of the Hopi nation.
*Letters and Notes on the North American Indians – George Catlin – 1841, edited and republished by Michael M. Mooney in 1975.
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