Camanchees Lancing a Buffalo Bull

Executed in oil on card mounted on paperboard, the painting features a palette of muted greens, browns, and soft blues. Catlin employed smooth, detailed brushwork, paying careful attention to the musculature of the animals and the animated poses of the riders. The landscape stretches flat toward distant mountains under a pale blue sky with scattered pink-tinged clouds. The work is mounted with wide borders, and a small label reading 291 appears at the top center, corresponding to its original exhibition catalog number.

Created between 1861 and 1869, the painting was part of Catlin's Cartoon Collection, which he exhibited in New York in 1871. At that exhibition, the work was listed as Cart. No. 291. Following Catlin's death in 1872, the painting descended to his three daughters, Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin. In 1912, the American Museum of Natural History purchased the work from Elizabeth Wing Catlin. The museum deaccessioned the painting in 1959, selling it through Kennedy Galleries in New York to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia. Mellon gifted the work to the National Gallery of Art in 1965. It has since been included in multiple lending service exhibitions across the United States, and was on extended loan to the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the U.S. Department of State from 1966 to 1981, and to President Barack Obama at the White House from 2009 to 2017.

George Catlin created two major collections of Native American subjects during the mid-19th century. His first, the Indian Gallery, included more than 500 works from the 1830s, with most surviving pieces now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. During the 1850s and 1860s, he produced a second body of over 600 works, the Cartoon Collection, to which this painting belongs. Originally trained as a lawyer, Catlin dedicated himself to documenting indigenous customs and the Great Plains frontier, traveling extensively among tribes such as the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanche. He advocated for a national park to preserve Native American heritage and wilderness, and published Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians in 1841 to establish his role as a visual historian. Financial struggles prompted him to take his Indian Gallery to Europe in 1841, though he continued to face monetary challenges throughout his life.

Catlin's paintings are studied today for their historical significance in recording indigenous cultures before the transformative impacts of westward expansion. His work has been reproduced widely as commercial prints and canvases, indicating an enduring popular interest in his western imagery. The institutional preservation of his Cartoon Collection at the National Gallery of Art, alongside his Indian Gallery at the Smithsonian, ensures his documentation of Native American heritage remains accessible for ongoing scholarship and public exhibition.