In this version of the earlier CR# 189A, Miller has replaced Stewart and Antoine with generic trappers and dispelled some of the intimacy of the scene by removing the tent and setting the scene in an open plain. Miller has also added many of the missing details of the cradleboard. We can now clearly see the deerskin wrappings holding the child in place as well as the protective headpiece attached to the top of the cradleboard. The size of the cradleboard and child relative to the mother are also smaller, making the overall rendering more accurate.
Historian Susan Schoelwer has noted that cradleboards were of particular interest to Miller and his contemporaries. Miller includes cradleboards in as many as twenty images, either as the focus or in the background detail. Unlike his contemporary painter, George Catlin, Miller generally does not expend much time or detail in rendering cradleboards, and it is common for him to leave out essential details, such as the headpiece or the decoration. Miller’s note to this sketch does include some basic ethnographic information: “In riding out the child is hung to the saddle bow. When she is engaged in any domestic employment, it is suspended from the branch of a tree, or on the tripod near the lodge,” but he otherwise gives little indication of his opinion of the practice.
