This buffalo banner from the 1892 Populist convention declares, “In the Old Parties We Trusted untill Financially we are Busted,” and promises to elect “Honest Men.” Perhaps taking the buffalo as a mascot was a poor choice for the new party, for just as the great herds on the western plains had been decimated in the 1880s, the People’s (or Populist) Party would go down to defeat in 1896. Nebraska State Historical Society.