# White Man Has Been Here An image macro built from Robert Griffing's 2000 painting Friend or Foe shows two Native American hunters inspecting footprints, with captions that pin stereotypical white behavior on whatever they find. The template surfaced in late 2017 on Facebook and sat quiet until Instagram and Reddit edits in April and May 2019 opened it up. By 2021 and 2022, Redditors and Twitter users were swapping the punchline for vapes, forklifts and YouTube video essays. ## Origin American painter Robert Griffing finished Friend or Foe in 2000, showing two Native American hunters bent over footprints in snow[3]. An unknown editor added three speech bubbles sometime before October 2017, turning the painting into an image macro with the "Yellow snow. Wrote Name" punchline[1]. The earliest documented repost of that captioned image went up on October 8th, 2017, on the Facebook page Blackfoot Productions, where it quietly collected nine reactions over the next five years[1]. A December 28th, 2017 upload to santabanta.com preserved the most untouched version of the cartoon, including the black border Griffing's painting is normally framed in, which helps confirm the template predates its viral spread[1][2]. The original artist of the painting is Griffing; the cartoon editor who added the dialogue has not been identified[3][1]. - **Platform:** Facebook (first repost) / Reddit and Instagram (viral spread) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2017 ## Overview White Man Has Been Here is a three-panel exploitable where two Native American hunters find tracks in the snow and one tells the other, "White man has been here." The second hunter asks, "How can you tell?" and the third speech bubble, originally reading "Yellow snow. Wrote Name," is swapped for a joke that pegs white people as the culprit[1][2]. The underlying image is Robert Griffing's 2000 oil painting Friend or Foe, cropped from its black border for most meme reposts[3]. Edits usually pin the detection on a product, habit, or piece of culture coded as stereotypically white, from vapes and forklifts to long-form YouTube video essays[4][5]. The joke lands on how specific the third panel is, so creators tend to pick a single oddly precise signifier instead of a broad category. Captioned versions keep the hunters' dialogue intact and change only the final bubble, which is why the format reads as a fill-in-the-blank template rather than a full redraw[1]. ## How to Use To use the format, keep the first two speech bubbles reading "White man has been here" and "How can you tell?" and replace only the third bubble with whatever stereotypical giveaway you want to assign to white people. Common conventions include a single-word punchline ("Vapes," "Froklifts") or a short reference to a product, hobby, or media artifact, often leaning on misspellings or oddly specific details for extra bite[4][5]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is White Man Has Been Here? It is an exploitable image macro using Robert Griffing's 2000 painting Friend or Foe, where two Native American hunters identify white people by whatever is in the final speech bubble[1][3]. ### Where did White Man Has Been Here come from? An unknown editor added speech bubbles to Griffing's painting, and the earliest known repost of the captioned image went up on the Facebook page Blackfoot Productions on October 8th, 2017[1]. ### What does White Man Has Been Here mean? The joke pegs some stereotypical habit or object, like vapes or long YouTube video essays, as evidence that white people were around, with the hunters playing it completely straight[5][7]. ### How do you use White Man Has Been Here? Keep the first two speech bubbles intact and replace only the third with a short reference to something coded as stereotypically white, as salty.memesters did with "Froklifts" in April 2019[4]. ### Is White Man Has Been Here still popular? It is a classic exploitable that saw its biggest numbers in 2021 and 2022 on Reddit and Twitter, including a r/dankmemes post with around 55,000 upvotes and a tweet with roughly 126,400 likes[6][7]. ## References 1. [https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Friend-or-Foe/FD19E49B87115376]() 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20171220230234/http://www.santabanta.com/cartoons/19301/writing-name-in-the-snow-with-pee/]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/white-man-has-been-here]() 4. [https://www.facebook.com/blackfootproductions/photos/522681058076288]() 5. [https://www.instagram.com/p/BwSP9zIF4XA/]() 6. [https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/n8ki25/vapes_gave_away_custard/]() 7. [https://twitter.com/tribematic/status/1520232113668120576]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/white-man-has-been-here Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library