Hunting the Buffalo Painting

Hunting the Buffalo is part of Paula McHugh’s series of paintings inspired by the titles of American and Celtic fiddle tunes and folk songs. This painting depicts a "long hunter" of the early American frontier dressed in buckskins. In the scene the wood buffalo graze, a native species that ranged throughout the eastern part of North America when Europeans first began to settle in the 1600s settlements. Smaller in size and darker in color than the Great Plains bison, the wood buffalo cut gully-like trails through the dense Eastern forests. The bison trails were used by Indians and early settlers traversing the wilderness. Daniel Boone was one of the early trailblazers. In his writings of 1769 he describes the wood buffalo, the Carolina parakeet, and the Eastern elk, each no longer with us.