“This river has become famous as the great rendezvous of all expeditions to the Far West,” Miller explained in the text accompanying this painting. “Here the Fur Companies every year meet the Indians, who congregate from all quarters, and specimens of nearly all the tribes may be here seen about the month of August.” (Ross, 1968, text accompanying plate 185)
In this later view of Green River, Miller has removed the teepees of the rendezvous and made the image more of a wilderness scene, with a trapper watching from the bank as Indians on the large boulders (left center) fish with spears. This image, too, was a part of the July 1858 commission that William T. Walters of Baltimore gave Miller (two hundred watercolors at twelve dollars apiece), which, in many cases, are transcriptions of his field sketches drawn during the 1837 expedition to the rendezvous. Miller provided a descriptive text for each painting and delivered them in installments over the next twenty-one months. Walters preserved them in three bound albums.
