“I painted a lot of old time Westerners¯cowboys, Indians, outfitters¯people with wrinkles. But I painted them as people. That they were Westerners was incidental. If I had moved to New England as I first intended, I would have painted wrinkled fisherman.”



James Bama met Henry Bright Wings during a medicine ceremony performed in the tepee of a Crow medicine man in Wyola, Montana. He was then 68. Bama liked his classic face, which he thought would have been appropriate on a buffalo nickel. When Bright Wings visited Old Trail Town i. . .