Okay, I couldn’t come up with a catchy title for this picture but it pretty much sums it up: two men sit in front of a squalid sod house while in front of them is a pile of buffalo bones bleaching in the sun. There is a knife sharpening wheel next to the house, presumably so they could keep their buffalo skinning knives in top condition.
What is going on in this photograph?
The photo is from a postcard commemorating life in the Old West. It had the incongruous caption “The beginning of better things.” What did that mean? Was the postcard publisher being sarcastic?
What better things can start from a pile of bones symbolizing the wholesale slaughter of the buffalo and the end of a way of life for the American Indian? We will perhaps never know how people in that era interpreted the photo. Perhaps they saw the extinction of the buffalo as progress, allowing for cattle ranching and settlement. To modern eyes the scene is bleak and hopeless, a cemetery rather than a place of new beginnings.
This photo makes me sad for he buffalo and the disappearance of the Old West.
