In 1874, Harper’s Weekly featured this illustration of a buffalo-hide hunter skinning a carcass on the southwestern plains. City father Colonel Richard Dodge wrote of the carnage, “The air was foul with sickening stench, and the vast plain which only a short twelve months before teemed with animal life, was a dead, solitary putrid desert.” Library of Congress.

READING THE IMAGE: What virtues and stereotypes of the West does this magazine cover extol?

CONNECTIONS: How does magazine’s subtitle, “Journal of Civilization,” fit the picture?