This is a classic scene after the hunt. Miller employed it frequently when picturing Stewart’s exploits, placing his patron in the position of the onlooker on the right. A hunter from Stewart’s troop has felled a big bison bull, one weighing “upward of 2,000 lbs.,” according to Miller. The hunter is unidentified. He performs the task of removing the “Bos or Hump rib” as Miller called them, the “choicest” part of the animal, and a morsel “probably superior to all meats whatsoever.”
The hump rib along with the side ribs and tongue are packed, along with the fleece, on a “Sumpter mule, and dispatched to camp” (Ross, 173). The mule can be seen on the far right of the composition.
