In May 1888 Remington went to Arizona to write and illustrate a story for The Century Magazine on the African-American soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry. They were commanded by Lieutenant Powhatan Henry Clarke, a young officer from Louisiana, whom the artist idolized as the epitome of the dashing military horseman. Clarke provided Remington with a wealth of detail concerning the life of the horse soldier, and the artist put this information to good use in his later depictions of the subject. One of the best of these was The Wounded Bunkie, the second sculpture Remington produced in bronze. Lieutenant Clarke might have been the model for the gallant rescuer in this sculpture, for he had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for performing a similar feat during the height of a skirmish. Indeed, the sculpture could well have been a memorial to him, for he lost his life at Fort Custer, Montana, in 1893.

Remington’s amazing ability to create an action-filled composition is nowhere more evident than in this sculpture. The horses and riders are supported by only two of their eight legs, and the entire group seems to be momentarily arrested as it hurtles through space. The surface is painstakingly finished in order for details such as the veins on the horses’ legs to stand out clearly. The sand-casting method required a work of this complexity to be cast in several pieces; these were subsequently joined with such skill that the seams are virtually invisible. Small elements such as the canteens, reins, sabres, stirrups, and bedrolls were also cast separately, then carefully affixed to the work. Unfortunately, critical reception of The Wounded Bunkie fell far short of Remington’s expectations. It seems the work did not have the appeal of his earlier bronze, The Bronco Buster, and the subject was deemed too tragic. Only fourteen casts were eventually sold, out of an edition of twenty. For unknown reasons, the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company chose to mark the successive casts of The Wounded Bunkie with alphabetical letters, rather than with numbers as was usually the case.