This scene of an "Indian hunter pursuing buffalo early in the spring when the snow is sufficiently frozen to bear men but the animal breaks through and cannot run" would have been familiar to French fur traders from the St. Lawrence who pushed far into the western interior between 1713 and 1743. Horses had yet to appear on the eastern plains, being acquired first from the south by tribes in the Rocky Mountain foothills. Dogs remained the primary beasts of burden and, as the illustration depicts, were also useful in hunting. The painting was made by Peter Rindisbacher (1806-1834), a Swiss artist who settled in the Red River Colony as a teenager and lived there for five years before moving to the United States.
