Buffalo Hunt

Painted with richly saturated colors, Buffalo Hunt by Potawatomi artist Woody Crumbo depicts an energetic chase by two hunters. Following a herd of bison, one rider takes aim with a bow while the other leaps off his horse to plunge a knife into the back of a bison. In this dramatic and visceral scene, Crumbo infuses the composition with movement through the flowing manes of the horses, the fluttering garments of the two Potawatomi hunters, and the exhausted, panic-stricken faces of the bison. The main scene is located between two doorways. On the other side of the left doorway, the artist includes an isolated clump of tall reeds that are typical of the plains, similar to other flora in the main composition.

 

Woodrow Wilson Crumbo, better known as Woody Crumbo, was Director of Art at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, when he traveled to Washington, D.C. to complete his mural series at the new Department of the Interior building in 1940. He was one of four Native American artists who painted 2,200 feet of murals for the eighth-floor penthouse, which served as the employee lounge. While Crumbo painted the south corridor, Zia Pueblo artist Velino Herrera covered the north corridor. In the main room, the walls were divided between Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser and Navajo painter Gerald Nailor. The Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, insisted on commissioning artwork by Native American artists. Because of this mandate, the Section of Fine Arts invited Crumbo, Herrera, Houser, and Nailor to participate in the penthouse project and contacted two Kiowa artists, James Auchiah and Stephen Mopope, to paint murals for the cafeteria.