American Art Collaborative

"In looking at a body of these fellows scouring the prairies, one cannot fail to be impressed with their admirable horsemanship, and that such subjects originally gave birth to the conception of the fabled Centaur. A piece of Buffalo robe (á pish à maux) serves for a seat, and their bridle is composed of a piece of rope made of plaited bull-hide, attached to the lower lip of the horse; - this is all they required. Their great hold on the horse is with their knees, and it is almost impossible for an animal to throw them. We have seen them while their horses have been in full motion stoop and break a switch close to the ground, recovering their seat in a moment. One of their greatest delights is to mount a wild or unbroken horse. They master him in a short time, let him be as intractable and vicious as he may." A.J. Miller, extracted from "The West of Alfred Jacob Miller" (1837). In July 1858 William T. Walters commissioned 200 watercolors at twelve dollars apiece from Baltimore born artist Alfred Jacob Miller. These paintings were each accompanied by a descriptive text, and were delivered in installments over the next twenty-one months and ultimately were bound in three albums. Transcriptions of field-sketches drawn during the 1837 expedition that Miller had undertaken to the annual fur-trader's rendezvous in the Green River Valley (in what is now western Wyoming), these watercolors are a unique record of the closing years of the western fur trade.