At long last I feasted my eyes on the red buffalo rock art (pictured above). As I understand it the artwork is so vibrant, well-shaped and preserved that experts were called in to validate its authenticity as legitimate Indian rock art.
Silence about the red buffalo is common among Park workers, a number of whom have never seen it. And for those who have seen it silence is understandable. There is the fear of vandalism and this piece of history is irreplaceable.
Being near the center of Big Bend means the red buffalo is somewhat removed from the vandalism risks associated to the more easily accessed Park fringes. For that reason alone I have decided not to publish further clarification of the red buffalo’s location.
The original image is a Tagged Image Format File (TIFF) with a file data size of 35.1 megabytes (MB).
For display on this web site the TIFF was duplicated and the duplicate re-formatted as a Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG/JPEG) image with a file data size of 6.51 MB. To approximate detail visible at the time of capture the image was sharpened as necessary and resampled via the Photoshop Bicubic Sharpen algorithm. The re-sampling increases the image resolution from 300 Dots Per Square Inch (DPI) to 360 DPI.
Unless otherwise noted the image was corrected to offset color shift and balance. This restores black (shadows), white (highlights) and neutral gray (neutral mid-tones).
• An unnumbered image is the only one of the subject matter.
• A number corresponds to the sequential order in a subject-matter-related sequence.
• The letter “B” indicates color correction to approximate what was visible when the image was captured.
• The letter “C” indicates enhancement beyond an approximation of what was visible at the time of capture.