This painting is a study for Albert Bierstadt's The Last of the Buffalo (1888), which implied that Native Americans, rather than Euro-American settlers, were responsible for the bison's near extinction (down to about 500 in 1890 from about 20 million in 1850). The final painting suggested that America had fulfilled its Manifest Destiny to settle the West, and that Indian cultures, like the bison, were doomed to extinction (symbolized by the prominent skull).