Native American tribes on the Great Plains in the 19th century used the natural resources around them as the foundation for their lifestyle. Whichever animal was most plentiful in the region they inhabited was hunted religiously, and its horns, sinew, and hide used for everything from cutlery to bow strings to shirts and pants. There was a band of Mountain Shoshone who lived in the area that became Yellowstone National Park who hunted bighorn sheep to the point that they became known as the Tukudika, or Sheep Eater Indians. The lifestyles of those Native American tribes on the Great Plains, whose cultures were built and passed down over numerous generations and thousands of years, eventually gave way to the westward expansion of the United States, and they were assimilated into Anglo-American culture or placed in modest reservations. This Tom Saubert Original Pastel “Shirt Leather” Native American Bighorn Sheep Framed & Matted Painting is in Excellent Condition, with some light chipping to the top right corners of the frame, several scattered tears around the edges of the black paper backing, and with some light scattered age wear evident. Otherwise, the painting is in excellent shape, with no other damage. Most interestingly, it’s an original pastel painting titled “SHIRT LEATHER”, and so marked on a small brass plaque pinned to the lower middle front frame, which is also marked with the artist’s name, “Tom Saubert” (born 1950 and painting out of Kalispell, Montana), depicts a Native American woman scraping the hide from a bighorn sheep skin in the traditional Native American method of stretching it out and staking it to the ground with pegs, with the skull of the animal in the foreground, and the woman’s child looking on at the painstaking process in the background, and is signed “T Saubert” by the artist in elegant fashion at the lower right front. It measures 23 3/8” x 17 3/8” and remains beautifully matted in a 32” x 26 1/2” glass faced, gilt washed hardwood frame, features a black paper backing with a hanging wire across the middle reverse, and is a beautiful example of a rare, original Tom Saubert Original Pastel “Shirt Leather” Native American Bighorn Sheep Framed & Matted Painting.