Encampment of Indians

As far as we know, when William T. Walters ordered a set of two hundred watercolors from Miller in 1858, he permitted the artist to select the images to be reproduced from the sketches that he had made while on his trip west. It is also likely that Miller created some new compositions in later years, especially after he read works like George Frederic Ruxton’s Life in the Far West, which was initially published in 1848 in Blackwood’s Magazine, and this image may be one of them in that we do not know of a sketch for it. It relates directly to an 1850 oil painting (CR# 428), although Miller did make a few changes—for example, a pot of some kind has replaced the hump ribs over the campfire. (Strong, 2008, p. 173)

Ron Tyler