George Catlin was among the first artists to travel into the American frontier to paint Plains Indian peoples in the early nineteenth century. His multi-year expeditions resulted in hundreds of portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes that became part of his Indian Gallery, which he toured to multiple venues in the eastern United States and Europe. In his lectures and writings, Catlin emphasized the documentary purpose of his work to record the “manners, customs, and conditions of the North American Indians.”

In Buffalo Dance, Mandan dancers take turns as hunters and prey, repeatedly miming a hunt. Catlin noted that the dance never failed, because “the scene is easily kept up night and day, until the desired effect has been produced, that of ‘making the buffalo come.’”