Approaching Buffalo under the Disguise of a Wolf

This is the first iteration of a scene that became popular with Miller, which he painted in two variations. Here Miller placed his patron in the shadows while one of his chief hunters, probably Antoine, creeps forward, disguised as a wolf, to get a good shot a one of two buffalo bulls. The deception was one that these men had learned from the Indians. Stewart’s gaze seems more on his fellow hunter than on the prey, thus emphasizing his fascination with the unique ruse rather than on the hunt itself. 

Miller painted this watercolor in the field or shortly after his return from the West in 1837. It became the seventeenth page in a special portfolio of pictorial remembrances from his and Stewart’s adventure. 

Peter H. Hassrick