This is a painting from the Romantic period by George Catlin titled, "Buffalo Chase in Winter."  We looked at many paintings in class from the same period, but this stood out to me more than a lot of the ones we looked at.

First off, look at the title, I do not think Americans are the people chasing buffalo in this painting, so right off the bat we can assume it is depicting Native Americans.  What surprised me was that in this painting it portrays the Native 

Americans as savages who are simply slaughtering countless buffalo in their tracks.  Also, at least half of the painting is focused and devoted to the clouds rolling in and the endless snowy hills of whatever frontier this is taking place on.  This really belittles the Native Americans and makes them look very insignificant to nature; in other words that nature could swallow them up whenever it wanted.  Another thing to look at is that not only nature is being expressed as much bigger and more powerful, look at the Native American closest to us in the painting, and his size juxtaposed to the buffalo.  It looks as if the buffalo is at least twice his size, and not only that, but the sheer number of buffalo to Indians downsizes them even more.  Over and over again the idea that nature is far greater than human life is expressed not only this painting, but in many others like it as well.