Ask the Scholar

Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference. These words, which shaped how Miller’s contemporaries viewed the watercolors, reveal the racism and sexism embedded in 19th-century exploration and colonization of the western part of what is today the United States.The scene is a normal day in an Indian village, with the teepee thrown open to admit the fresh air while the Indians in front are making bows, arrows, and so on. In the foreground, a warrior is petting his horse. Miller, perhaps in anticipation of the old cowboy-and-horse story, suggested that, if the Indian had to choose between his horse and his bride, "we opine that the horse would be the first choice." 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.