Although there was an element of adventure to the hunting of buffalo, to the Indians of the northern plains it was a necessity for survival. Running buffalo was inherently dangerous. The frightened animals were wholly unpredictable, and the individual hunter often had to rely on the quick reflexes of his trained “buffalo horse” to keep him out of trouble. These remarkable horses—each one worth as many as twenty ordinary horses to the Indians—were trained to carry their riders to the proper place alongside the fleeing animals, then turn sharply away as the arrows were loosened. The horses did this with little or no prodding from their riders. Sometimes a thousand-pound buffalo, especially if it was already wounded, would suddenly wheel around and catch the horse with its deadly horns. The horse could be disemboweled in the process, and occasionally the unfortunate hunter also was badly injured or even killed. A Plains Indian buffalo hunt of earlier days was one of Russell’s favorite subjects, and he depicted it more than forty times in his work. He heard many oral accounts of hunting exploits from his Indian friends, and an instance such as he depicts in this watercolor, where a wounded and enraged bull has felled both a warrior and his horse, was not at all uncommon. Here, Russell showed the fallen hunter’s friends frantically trying to kill the animal before it inflicts permanent damage. The fallen hunter’s short bow and quiver of arrows lies in the foreground. The beadwork decoration visible on the bow and quiver is typical of the reservation period—later in style than the period Russell seems to have portrayed in this watercolor.