Snake Indians

After Sir William Drummond Stewart received the set of eighty-seven sketches Miller made of their journey, the nobleman began selecting those sketches he wanted Miller to recreate in oil. Snake Indians is one such painting. Based on Reconnoitering (CR# 396, now in a private collection), a simple sketch of an Indian man holding a lance and riding out onto a promontory, Miller’s oil infuses drama into the scene. In both versions, the rider sits high on his horse, his carriage erect. Seen from a lower and more distant vantage point in the oil, however, he appears more monumental. His billowing blanket suggests the figures move speedily toward the edge of the cliff, which now juts out abruptly over a vast plain below. Although the oil makes the rider’s strategic position clear, it remains ambivalent about the eponymous act of surveying. The man raises his chin as if to scan the view before him, but because he faces outward toward the viewer, we do not see the landscape he sees. At the same time, the vista the viewer is privy to, a stream winding from a cleft in a distant mountain through a broad, open plain dotted by a traders’ caravan, is not visible to him. His posture suggests he is cognizant of the caravan behind him, but unconcerned by its presence. Yet his nonchalance is not sufficient to dispel subtle portents of danger: the vines that hang over the precipice, the dark clouds above his head, and the shadows across the landscape below.

Lisa Strong