Black Indian, Buffalo Soldiers

Williams is telling a story in this painting through the use of vibrant colors, symbols, and icons. The work is large and envelopes any viewer standing before it. It has a heavy, physical presence that rivals our own.

The story Williams is telling comes from American history but this history is not common knowledge.

The bold, glowing yellow background pulls us in and quite literally sets the scene as being somewhere different—in a landscape unlike that of the Midwest. Populating the mottled yellow field are human figures—Native and African Americans—engaged in various activities. The figures and the symbols surrounding them share the story of the Black Indian Buffalo Soldiers.

Williams intentionally includes borders, territories, and terrain to show how they merged two cultures. Written history often leaves out the role that African Americans play in the development of the West as we know it today. In fact, after the Civil War, the United States government created 6 peacetime military units consisting of all African American soldiers– Buffalo Soldiers–comprised of some Civil War veterans and newly freed slaves to secure the West by escorting wagon trains of Christian settlers and building forts, railroads, telegraph lines, and roads.  At the end of their military service many soldiers settled in the West and became cowboys.

As with much of his work, in Black Indian, Buffalo Soldiers Williams “attempts to manage the overwhelming complexities of constructing histories that evoke radically differing worldviews. Time barriers are crossed, intersected, and allowed to coexist in a single work. The past is never over and always beginning, altering the model of history and creating the past anew.”