This watercolor depicts what is apparently a Pawnee camp featuring a reposing warrior and his wife with an array of fellow soldiers and their horses in the distance to the right. The preliminary study for this is titled Pawnee Indian Camp (CR# 422). The main protagonist enjoys a savory pipe full of tobacco, wafting smoke from his mouth in what Miller referred to as “fragrant fumes” that encircled “his head in a small cloud.”
The relaxed, bucolic feel of the scene belies the character of the individuals portrayed, a group of feared and troublesome Pawnee men. Miller and Stewart dreaded the Pawnee, who during much of the early trip west in 1837 harassed the troop of travelers and provided a continual threat to their safety. Their leader, the reclining figure in the picture, was referred to as “pugnacious” by Miller, a term he would happily have used for all Pawnees. (Ross, 115)
