THE BUFFALO AND THE IRONHORSE  bronze 9.5’’x 34’’ x 11.5’’

                Click on to watch video on sculpture   https://youtu.be/YFujS9qWEtE

Two competing symbols of white and Indian culture - the iron horse and the buffalo - help explain the conflict and change on the Great Plains. By the 1880s, the buffalo was near extinction, replaced on the Plains by powerful, steam-belching railroad locomotives, or iron horses as the Indians called them. The advance of iron horses not only hastened the demise of the buffalo, but also forever transformed the environment and the lives of human animal cultures of the Great Plains.  A culture and historical era that had defined life for Plains Indians for thousands of years came to an end as iron horses crossed the prairies where millions of buffalo once had grazed.