American Art Collaborative

"The sketch represents a Dacotah Mother fondling a papoose, with a little dusky imp near her in the shape of a son. To the right is a temporary lodge of twigs or osier bent, and the ends firmly fixed into the ground; pieces transversed are secured to these, and over this frame is stretched blankets, buffalo robes, or anything in fact that will answer for a covering; as it is only 4 feet in height, the occupant can only creep in and lie down... In the middle distance is an Indian preparing dried meat. The meat is first cut into thin slices, laid on a frame over the fire and smoked, packed into bundles, and laid by for scarcity in provender, or for winter use." 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.