The “Cruel Slaughter”: Environmentalism and Fortress Conservation in Albert Bierstadt’s The Last of the Buffalo

Abstract

Albert Bierstadt and his monumental late work, The Last of the Buffalo, both reflected and shaped late nineteenth-century American environmental attitudes and conservation policy. While Bierstadt and his painting helped generate public support for the protection of the American bison (Bison bison), it simultaneously promoted a model of “fortress conservation,” or preservation focused on separating humans from protected landscapes. Through analysis of the painting's visual strategies, exhibition history, and cultural context, this thesis demonstrates how nineteenth-century visual culture influenced both the successful protection of endangered species and the establishment of conservation approaches that separated humans from protected landscapes and reinforced displacement of Indigenous communities. By depicting Native Americans, rather than federal hunters, as those responsible for the bison’s extermination, The Last of the Buffalo absolved government agencies of culpability while enabling them to later position themselves as champions of the species’ conservation. An ecocritical analysis of this legacy can inform both interpretation of historic American landscape art as well as future environmental attitudes and natural resource policy.