Buffalo Skinner's Cart
by Gordon Snidow
Over 60 million buffalo once roamed the Great Plains, hunted only by natural prey and the Native Americans who depended on the animal for their livelihoods. When General Philip Sheridan took command of the U.S. troops in the West in 1867, he swore to bring peace to the plains by killing off the buffalo.
Herds were so large that trains often had to stop and wait hours for the buffalo to pass. Railroads began to hire commercial hunters to clear the herds and hundreds of hunters arrived easily by train and began indiscriminately killing buffalo for their hides. Using a “still hunt,” the leader of the herd was targeted. Confused, the remainder of the herd would eventually become still and easily slaughtered.
After one of these expeditions, the plains for miles around were covered with mutilated buffalo carcasses. The skins were stretched, baled and shipped like cordwood. By the end of 1875, the great southern herd was practically extinct.
The thinning of the buffalo herds cleared the prairies for the grazing of cattle and the farming of crops, still the basis of agriculture in Oklahoma today.
Buffalo Skinner's Cart by Gordon Snidow was dedicated on April 21, 2004. The commission was managed by the Oklahoma State Senate Historical Preservation Fund, Inc.
The painting is located outside the Oklahoma State Senate lounge on the fourth floor of the Oklahoma State Capitol and can be viewed daily from 8:30-5:30 when the Senate is not in session.
The Artist
For over 40 years, Gordon
Snidow has been known as the foremost chronicler of the contemporary
cowboy. He is a leader in the development of the
American Western Art Movement, and is one of America's outstanding
fine artists. He paints the West not as he would like it to be, but
the way it is - warts and all.
Snidow was born in 1936 and grew up in Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma, where he attended Tulsa’s Webster High School and Tulsa University. He earned a bachelors of fine arts degree from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He is a charter member of the Cowboy Artists of America.
“I remember my first art show in the second grade in Tulsa ... Dad found a teacher to give me private lessons in Enid, Oklahoma, and enrolled me in the Famous Artists School. Then I discovered the Gilcrease Museum when I was twelve and I decided I wanted to be a cowboy artist.”
His work can be found in the permanent collection of leading western art museums. He participates in several shows including the Prix de West Show at the National Cowboy Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Snidow is also the creator of the “Coors Cowboy Collectors Series.”
In 2003, Snidow was honored with a retrospective exhibtion at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building in Washington DC. The exhibition, "Gordon Snidow - My Story" featured more than 100 works of art spanning over four decades of his career.