Author Archives: Angie Thomas

Coming Soon – Confluence of Cultures

Coming Soon: New Art Exhibit for 2026

We’re excited to announce an upcoming art exhibit for the 2026 season, generously loaned by the Tim Peterson family. Confluence of Cultures explores the dynamic interactions between Mountain Men and Plains Indians and features 87 works of art by 45 different artists.

Museum Curator Andrea Lewis and the MMM staff are currently preparing the downstairs gallery and getting ready to install this remarkable collection. Stay tuned for more details—we look forward to welcoming you to this exhibit soon.

New Year’s Festivities in the Fur Trade Era

By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff

In the early 19th-century fur trade, New Year’s often eclipsed Christmas as the primary festive occasion in remote areas. While Christmas was frequently quiet, or entirely unobserved, New Year’s tended to bring camaraderie, feasting, and lively celebration.

An early example appears during the Astorians’ westward expedition of 1811–1812: Wilson Price Hunt made no mention of Christmas at all. On December 24, 1811, he wrote only of cold, muddy trails and weary travel:

On the 24th I [at last] turned away from the Canoe River, remembrance of which will always cause us some moments of unhappiness. We traveled west, crossing hills by a trail that was sometimes level enough, more often irregular, but always good. A little snow fell and a little rain.[1]

Hunt’s next entry did not occur until December 28, when he again focused on the terrain and noted the birth of Marie Dorion’s child on December 31.[2]

Hunt was then asked to pause a day to celebrate the New Year. As Washington Irving later described,

This was particularly urged by the Canadian voyageurs, with whom New-Year’s day is a favorite festival; and who never willingly give up a holiday, under any circumstances. There was no resisting such an application; so the day was passed in repose and revelry; the poor Canadians contrived to sing and dance in defiance of all their hardships; and there was a sumptuous New-Year’s banquet of dog’s meat and horse flesh.[3]

Hunt’s own entry for January 1, 1812, recorded a more modest account of the celebration:

My people asked me not to travel on the 1st of January without first celebrating the new year. I agreed to the idea willingly because most of them were very tired from having daily no more than a meager meal of horse meat and from carrying packs on their shoulders while crossing the mountains.[4]

John C. Luttig recorded the New Year’s holiday a year later in 1813. His entry of January 1 noted:

January the 1st, The new year was ushered in by firing a Salute and paying the Complement of the Season, every One seemed rejoiced of having lived to see another year, fine moderate weather in the Evening several Rees arrived, they brought a Present for Mr. Manuel, but he would not accept it, I took it and paid pretty high.[5]

Alexander Ross described New Year observances some years later in 1824-25. On Saturday, December 25, 1824, he wrote: “Considerable indians; the peace pipe kept in motion. All the people a dram.” The following day, he noted: “No work today. Ordered the men to dress and keep the Sabbath.” For January 1, 1825, Ross recorded a more formal observance: “At daybreak the men saluted with guns. They were treated to rum and cake, each a pint of rum and a half pound of tobacco.”[6]

Similarly, John Work’s journals often reflect an emphasis on New Year festivities. For example, in January 1826, his Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) brigade received extra rations, including venison, buffalo tongue, flour, and rum. Musket volleys, rum, cake, and tobacco marked the occasion:

At daylight they ushered in the new year with a volley of musketry … With this and the pint given to each of them, they soon contrived to get nearly all pretty drunk. They appeared to pass the day comfortably enjoying themselves.[7]

Image courtesy of Dave Bell – Wyoming Mountain Photography.

Peter Skene Ogden, who often endured meager provisions at Christmas, also reserved celebration for the New Year. On Sunday, December 25, 1826, he recorded: “Christmas. I did not raise camp and we are reduced to one meal a day.” But on January 1, 1827, he noted more festivity in the HBC camp: “New Year’s commences with a mild day. The men paid me their respects. I gave each a dram and tobacco. Goat killed.” [8]

The following year, Ogden made no mention of Christmas at all, but recorded news of the fur trade: “Arrival of one of our men from Sickly River relieves me of anxiety. He reports they have 100 beavers and are not far. Our total number of beaver exceeds my expectations.” In 1828, New Year’s celebrations were briefly noted, but Ogden largely focused on weather and daily life:

January 1. The men paid me their respects and were politely received. The Americans followed the example and received the same treatment. The Americans leave for Salt Lake. The hunters are now making snow shoes as the depth of snow keeps increasing. The others pass their time in gambling. No cards are sold to the men at Ft. Vancouver. Still they procure them.[9]

Even in places where Christmas was traditionally observed, such as the Spanish provinces of New Mexico and California, New Year’s remained central. While in Perdido, a small town south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, James Ohio Pattie described attending a Spanish fandango on New Year’s Eve, 1827: “All our company were invited … we had the pleasure of dancing with the handsomest and richest of them.”[10]

That same year, Harrison G. Rogers highlighted the spiritual side of the holiday at Mission San Gabriel, in California. He sent New Year’s greetings to the Padre that combined celebration with moral reflection: “Standing on the threshold of a New Year, I salute you with the most cordial congratulations and good wishes … Therefore my advice to all the human family is to be faithful, devoted to God, kind, benevolent … live for eternity.”[11]

Sometimes the celebrations extended to Epiphany, or “Old Christmas Day.” Rogers recalled that on January 6, wine flowed, music played, and occasionally tempers flared: “Some of the men got drunk and two of them … commenced fighting … I went among them and pacified our men by telling them what trouble they were bringing upon themselves if they did not desist.” [12]

John Work’s later journals reinforce the notion that New Year’s was often more consistently celebrated than Christmas. On January 1, 1831, Work noted: “Satdy, 1. Clear mild weather. This being Newyears day none of the people went a hunting, they endeavored to regale themselves the best way they could … Each man was treated with a dram of rum and some cakes in the morning.”[13]

Trapper Warren Ferris also remembered the first day of 1833:

The first of January, 1833, or New Years day, was spent in feasting, drinking, and dancing, agreeable to the Canadian custom. In amusements such as riding, shooting, wrestling, etc. when the weather was fair, and in the diversion of card playing when the state of affairs without would not permit athletic exercises, the month of January passed away, during which, we had changed our camp three times, in order to obtain better grass for our faithful animals. The weather was generally fine, but little snow had fallen, and we usually found plenty of game near our camp – therefore time passed away not only comfortably but pleasantly.[14]

Ferris’s account of 1834 also emphasized New Year’s celebrations:

The new year was ushered in with feasting and merriment, on dried buffalo meat, and venison, cakes and coffee; which might appear to people constantly accustomed to better fare, rather meagre variety for a dinner, not to say a feast. But to us who have constantly in mind the absolute impossibility of procuring better, and the no less positive certainty, that we are often compelled to be satisfied with worse, – the repast was both agreeable and excellent; for think not, that we enjoy, daily, the same luscious luxuries of cake and coffee, that announces the advent of 1834; by no means.[15]

Taken together, these accounts demonstrate that New Year’s was often the primary festive occasion for fur traders. Scarce provisions, harsh winters, and isolation meant Christmas was often modest, or skipped entirely, while New Year’s offered a reason to gather and feast.  Cultural influence from French Canadian, Scottish, and Spanish traditions shaped these rituals, blending merriment with the rhythms of frontier life.

All images courtesy of Dave Bell – Wyoming Mountain Photography.

[1] Wilson Price Hunt, The Overland Diary of Wilson Price Hunt, Hoyt C. Franchère, ed. (Ashland, OR: The Oregon Book Society, 1973), 51.

[2] Wilson Price Hunt, The Overland Diary of Wilson Price Hunt, Hoyt C. Franchère, ed. (Ashland, OR: The Oregon Book Society, 1973), 51-52.

[3] Washington Irving, Astoria: Or, Anecdotes of an Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains, Edgely W. Todd, ed. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 308.

[4] Wilson Price Hunt, The Overland Diary of Wilson Price Hunt, Hoyt C. Franchère, ed. (Ashland, OR: The Oregon Book Society, 1973), 52.

[5] John C. Luttig, Journal of a Fur-Trading Expedition on the Upper Missouri, 1812-1813,Stella M. Drumm, ed. (St. Louis, MO: Missouri Historical Society, 1920), 110.

[6] T. C. Elliott, ed., “Journal of Alexander Ross—Snake Country Expedition, 1824,” The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 14, no. 4 (December 1913): 387.

[7] T. C. Elliott, ed., “Journal of John Work, Dec. 15th, 1825, to June 12th, 1826,” The Washington Historical Quarterly 5, no. 4 (October 1914): 264.

[8] T. C. Elliott, ed., “The Peter Skene Ogden Journals,” The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 11, no. 2 (June 1910): 212.

[9] Peter Skene Ogden, “Journal of Peter Skene Ogden; Snake Expedition, 1827-1828,” The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society 11, no. 4 (December 1910): 367-368.

[10] James Ohio Pattie, Pattie’s Personal Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific and in Mexico, June 20, 1824–August 30, 1830, Timothy Flint, ed. (Cleveland, OH]: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1905), 167.

[11] Harrison Clifford Dale, ed., The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822–1829 (Cleveland, OH: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1918), 213-214.

[12] Harrison Clifford Dale, ed., The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822–1829, with the Original Journals (Cleveland, OH: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1918), 219-220.

[13] John Work, The Snake Country Expedition of 1830-31; John Work’s Field Journal, Francis D. Haines, ed. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 61.

[14] Warren Angus Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, 1830–1835, Leroy R. Hafen, ed. (The Old West Publishing Company, Denver, CO: 1983), 260. 

[15] Warren Angus Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, 1830–1835, Leroy R. Hafen, ed. (The Old West Publishing Company, Denver, CO: 1983), 310-311. 

A Fur Trade Christmas: Rufus B. Sage and Holiday Ingenuity

By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff

Celebrating Christmas in the remote reaches of the Rocky Mountains required creativity, and sometimes a bit of improvisation. Fur trade journals offer glimpses into how trappers, traders, and their Native neighbors adapted familiar traditions to unfamiliar landscapes. One of the most vivid accounts comes from Rufus B. Sage, who described a remarkably festive Christmas dinner crafted from whatever resources the camp could gather.

Towards the end of November 1841, Sage, a member of a party employed by Lancaster P. Lupton, set out from the company’s Fort Lancaster on the South Fork of the Platte River in hopes of trading with the Brule Sioux. On Chadron Creek, a few miles from its confluence with the Upper White River (in present northwestern Nebraska), the men planned to build cabins for their winter quarters.1 From the newly constructed lodging, Sage wrote:

Dec. 25th. Christmas finds us in our new residence, which, with the exception of a chimney, is now completed.

This great annual festival is observed with all the exhilarating hilarity and good cheer that circumstances will allow. Several little extras for the occasion have been procured from the Indians, which prove quite wholesome and pleasant-tasted. One of these, called washena, consists of dried meat pulverized and mixed with marrow; another is a preparation of cherries, preserved when first picked by pounding and sun-drying them, (they are served by mixing them with bouillie, or the liquor of fresh-boiled meat, thus giving to it an agreeable winish taste;) a third is marrow-fat, an article in many respects superior to butter; and, lastly, we obtained a kind of flour made from the pomme blanc, (white apple,) answering very well as a substitute for that of grain.

The above assortment, with a small supply of sugar and coffee, as well as several other dainties variously prepared, affords an excellent dinner, — and, though different in kind, by no means inferior in quality to the generality of dinners for which the day is noted in more civilized communities.2 [Emphasis in original.]

Despite the isolation of winter camp, Sage and his companions found ways to make the day special. Their celebration blended “procured goods” and the skills of the diverse people around them. It was not the Christmas feast they might have known back home, but it was a feast nonetheless, and one made meaningful by the effort and cooperation involved.

Accounts like Sage’s show how Christmas in the fur trade was shaped by both location and circumstances. At major posts, celebrations might include abundant meals, music, dancing, or occasional rowdiness. In small winter camps, the holiday became a communal effort, with trappers, traders, and Native or Métis families improvising meals, songs, and games from limited supplies.

These gatherings highlight how mobility, scarcity, and cultural diversity influenced holiday traditions on the frontier. By sharing labor, blending customs, and celebrating with whatever was at hand, fur trade communities created hybrid holidays that preserved identity while fostering intercultural cooperation.

Whether in a bustling fort or a snowy mountain camp, Christmas offered a rare respite from the hardships of the fur trade—a moment to pause, connect, and find joy in the rugged landscape they called home.

Image Courtesy of Dave Bell – Wyoming Mountain Photography

All images courtesy of Dave Bell – Wyoming Mountain Photography.

  1. Charles E. Hanson, Jr. and Veronica Sue Walters, “The Early Fur Trade in Northwest Nebraska,” Nebraska History 57 (1976): 291-314. ↩︎
  2. Rufus B. Sage, Rocky Mountain life: or, Startling Scenes and Perilous Adventures in the Far West during an Expedition of Three Years (Boston: Wentworth & Company, 1857), 113. ↩︎

A Harvest All Their Own; Thanksgiving in the Rocky Mountains During the Fur Trade?

By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff

Mountain men and fur traders in the Rocky Mountains did not celebrate Thanksgiving as we know it today. The national holiday was not established until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it during the Civil War, hoping “to heal the wounds of the nation.”[1]

That said, trappers were certainly familiar with the idea of giving thanks. Many Native American tribes and colonial communities across North America held harvest festivals each fall to celebrate the end of the growing season and to give thanks for a bountiful harvest. [2] Mountain men, whether originating from these colonial communities or living among and trading with Native Americans, may have joined in these seasonal celebrations.

By late November, when we celebrate Thanksgiving today, the mountain men were engaged in their own kind of fall ritual, one focused on winter preparations and survival. Fall marked the peak of the beaver trapping season, when the animals’ winter coats were at their thickest and most valuable.  As the fall hunt drew to a close, trappers, like the beaver they pursued, were busy readying themselves for the harsh winter ahead.

In his 1830s journal Adventures of a Mountain Man, trapper Zenas Leonard described how the men spent early November:

On the 1st day of November we commenced travelling up the valley, on search of a suitable place to pass the winter, and on the evening of the 4th, we arrived at a large grove of Cottonwood timber, which we deemed suitable for encamping in. Several weeks were spent in building houses, stables, &c. necessary for ourselves, and horses during the winter season. This being done, we commenced killing Buffaloe, and hanging up the choice pieces to dry… We also killed Deer, Bighorn Sheep, Elk, Antelope, &c., and dressed the hides to make moccasins.[3]

Photo by Dave Bell of Wyoming Mountain Photography of a beaver pond.

It is no coincidence that November’s full moon is called the “Beaver Moon.”[4] Beaver are especially active this time of year, repairing dams, reinforcing lodges, and storing food for the frozen months ahead. Throughout the fall, they gather branches and stems from willows and trees, anchoring them underwater in a cache near their lodge. Once the surface freezes, these submerged “pantries” provide a steady food supply all winter long – a harvest of their very own.[5]

Just like beaver, mountain men were building shelters, storing provisions, and preparing for months of isolation and cold. Both were following instincts, or hard-earned experience, that told them it was time to prepare, endure, and survive until spring. Whether nestled in a beaver lodge or holed up in winter quarters, it was the ritual of preparation, harvesting and gathering that sustained both human and wildlife communities through the long, harsh winters. 

As their diet shifts from tender summer greens to the bark and woody stems they so carefully stored, one might imagine the beaver feeling a touch of gratitude for their industrious efforts. Their hard work has paid off – they have plenty to eat, a warm lodge, and months ahead to rest in cozy comfort – a kind of Thanksgiving, beaver-style.

Beaver photo by Elizabeth Boehm of elizabethboehm.com Photography

[1] Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation of Thanksgiving,” October 3, 1863, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 6:497–498.

[2] Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Harvest and Thanksgiving: Native American Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2015); https://www.si.edu/spotlight/thanksgiving/history, accessed 10/23/2025.

[3] Zenas Leonard, Adventures of a Mountain Man: The Narrative of Zenas Leonard, Written by Himself, intro. by Milo Milton Quaife (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), 19.

[4] https://www.almanac.com/full-moon-november, accessed 10/22/2025.

[5] https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Regional-Offices/Lander-Region/Lander-Region-News/Busy-Beaver, accessed 10/22/2025; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Beaver Restoration Guide, Version 1.0. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2022. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BRG%20v.1.0%20final%20reduced.pdf.

When the Elk Bugled: A Moonlit Moment in the Fur Trade

By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff

Here a circumstance occurred which furnished the subject for a good joke upon our green Irish camp keeper. … It was the commencement of the rutting season with the elk, when the bucks frequently utter a loud cry resembling a shrill whistle, especially when they see anything of a strange appearance. We had made our beds at night on a little bench between two small, dry gullies. The weather was clear and the moon shone brightly. About ten o’clock at night, when I supposed my comrades fast asleep, an elk blew his shrill whistle within about 100 yards of us. I took my gun, slipped silently into the gully and crept toward the place where I heard the sound, but I soon found he had been frightened by the horses and ran off up the mountain. On turning back I met Allen, who, hearing the elk, had started to get a shot at him in the same manner I had done without speaking a word. We went back to camp, but our camp keeper was nowhere to be found. We searched the bushes high and low ever and anon calling for “Conn,” but no “Conn” answered. At length Allen, cruising through the brush, tumbled over a pile of rubbish, when lo! Conn was beneath, nearly frightened out of his wits. “Arrah! an’ is it you, Allen?” said he trembling as if an ague fit was shaking him. “But I thought the whole world was full of the spalpeens of savages. And where are they gone?” It was near an hour before we could satisfy him of his mistake, and I dare say his slumbers were by no means soft or smooth during the remainder of the night.[1]

In this journal entry, mountain man Osborne Russell shares a rare detail from life in the fur trade era, the whistle, or bugle, of a bull elk during the rut. His account stands out not only for its humor and storytelling but also for capturing a rare and specific moment of trapper life.

The scarcity of similar observations about elk bugling in other journals does not suggest that trappers failed to notice or appreciate these sounds. Fur trappers and mountain men undoubtedly heard the bugles of elk, an unforgettable sound that marks the rutting season in the Rocky Mountains. More likely, the absence reflects differences in what individuals chose to record, or what has survived in print. Most fur trade journals focus on trade logistics, survival, mapping, or relationships with Native peoples, subjects far more relevant to daily life than the bugle of an elk on a moonlit night.

Photo by Dave Bell of Wyoming Mountain Photography of an elk bugling.

Russell, however, offers something unique: a brief account of what life in the fur trade sometimes sounded like, and a humorous glimpse into how trappers experienced those moments. Through his narrative, we can imagine the moonlit camp, the sudden stillness after the elk’s call, and the laughter of companions once fear gave way to relief.

In the Museum’s ongoing work to bring history to life, accounts like Russell’s help us understand not just what mountain men did, but what they and their comrades heard, felt, and feared, and allow us to imagine just how constant those fears must have been in the mountains. Yet Russell’s journal reminds us that even in an era of hardship and danger, there was room for curiosity and humor, moments that bring these historical figures to life for us today.

[1] Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper, 1834–1843, (Boise, ID: Syms-York Company, Inc., 1921) 70. “Spalpeens” is an Irish word roughly translated as “rascals.”

Wildfire in the Fur Trade

By: Museum of the Mountain Man Staff

Photo by Dave Bell of Wyoming Mountain Photography of the Cliff Creek Fire in 2017.

There are few references to large, uncontrolled wildfires in the Rocky Mountains in fur trade journals. One notable exception is George Ruxton’s detailed account of a narrow escape from a wildfire near Pike’s Peak in the spring of 1847. After descending from the mountains to camp beside a spring, Ruxton awoke to find the surrounding landscape engulfed in flames, with fire sweeping rapidly through the gorge and consuming dry brush, pines, and cedars. In a desperate effort to escape, he saddled his horse and drove his mules through the burning grass and brush, eventually forcing his way through a wall of fire and into an icy creek to reach safety.1 (Click here for full account).  While such large-scale fires were rarely recorded by fur traders, there are several references to intentional burning – often by Native Americans using fire for communication, improving habitat for hunting, or as a battle strategy. 

Fire As Communication

Rather than the intricate smoke signals made famous in Hollywood westerns, Native Americans often set entire valley bottoms on fire to create dense, visible smoke plumes. On August 31, 1804, near the Lemhi River in what is now eastern Idaho, members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition witnessed the following:

This day warm and Sultrey, Prairies or open Valies on fire in Several places. The country is Set on fire for the purpose of collecting the different bands (of Pend d’Oreille Indians), and a Band of the Flatheads to go to the Missouri (River drainage) where They intend passing the winter near the Buffalow.2

Trapper Warren Ferris observed a similar event in 1833:

The Indians with us, announced our arrival in this country by firing the prairies.  The flames ran over the neighboring hills with great violence…and filling the air with clouds of smoke.3

A year earlier, in 1832, Ferris had described a fire signal exchange near today’s Bannock Pass: 

[W]e saw a dense cloud of smoke rising from the plains forty or fifty miles to the southeastward, which we supposed to have been raised by the Flatheads, who accompanied Fontanelle to Cache Valley, and who were now in quest of the village to which they belong. The Indians with us answered the signal by firing a quantity of fallen pines on the summit of a high mountain.4

Ferris also recorded an accidental fire that quickly escalated into a threatening situation near present-day Deer Lodge, Montana:

A careless [Flathead] boy scattered a few sparks in the prairie, which, the dry grass almost instantly igniting, was soon wrapped in a mantle of flame. A light breeze from the south carried it with great rapidity down the valley, sweeping everything before it, and filling the air with black clouds of smoke … [The fire] however occasioned us no inconsiderable degree of uneasiness as we were now on the borders of the Blackfoot country … who it was reasonably inferred might be collected by the smoke, which is their accustomed rallying signal, in sufficient force to attack us … Clouds of smoke were observed on the following day curling up from the summit of a mountain jutting into the east side of the valley, probably raised by the Blackfeet to gather their scattered bands, though the truth was never more clearly ascertained.5

Prairie Meadows Burning, by George Gatlin. Image Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.374.

Fire in Battle

Fire was also used in warfare. In September 1835, Osborne Russell described an attack by “about 80 Blackfeet” who attempted to flush his party out by setting fire to the surrounding grass: 

We lay almost silently about 3 hours, when finding they could not arouse us to action by their long shots they commenced setting fire to the dry grass and rubbish with which we were surrounded. The wind blowing brisk from the south, in a few moments the fire was converted into one circle of flame and smoke which united over our heads. This was the most horrible position I was ever placed in.  Death seemed almost inevitable, but we did not despair, and all hands began immediately to remove the rubbish around the encampment and setting fire to it to act against flames that were hovering over our heads.  This plan proved successful beyond our expectations. Scarce half an hour had elapsed when the fire had passed around us and driven our enemies from their position. At length we saw an Indian whom we supposed to be the chief standing on a high point of rock and give the signal for retiring.6

Fire in Hunting

Fire was even used to trap game. In the 1840s, Father Pierre De Smet described a deer hunt near present-day Lake Coeur d’Alene in which fires were lit on both sides of a line to drive animals into the lake, where hunters in canoes awaited: 

On both ends of their line they light fires, some distance apart … The frightened deer rush to right and left to escape. As soon as they smell the smoke of fires, they turn and run back. Having the fires on both sides of them and the hunters in the rear, they dash toward the lake, and soon they are so closely pressed that they jump into the water, as the only refuge left for them. Then everything is easy for the hunters: they let the animals get away from the shore, then pursue them in their light bark canoes and kill them without trouble or danger.7

Prairie on Fire by Alfred Jacob Miller. Image Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, 37.1940.198.
For more info see https://alfredjacobmiller.com/artworks/prairie-on-fire/

Fire in Art

The drama of a wildfire was not wasted by early artists. George Catlin, an eyewitness to prairie fires, captured the chaos in his painting Prairie Meadows Burning, showing billowing smoke and figures fleeing before the flames. Alfred Jacob Miller’s Prairie on Fire depicts trappers hurriedly creating a firebreak to protect their camp from an approaching blaze.

These accounts demonstrate that fire was indeed a part of life during the Rocky Mountain fur trade, not only as a natural threat but also a cultural and strategic tool.

  1. George F. Ruxton, Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains (London: John Murray, 1849), 262-263. ↩︎
  2. Gary E. Moulton, The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001), 179. ↩︎
  3. Warren A. Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, Paul C. Phillips, ed. (Denver, CO: The Old West Publishing, Co., 1940), 215. ↩︎
  4. Ibid., 103. ↩︎
  5. Ibid., 106-07. ↩︎
  6. Osborne Russell, Journal of a Trapper: Or Nine Years in the Rocky Mountains, 1834-1843 (Boise, ID: Syms-York Company, Inc., 1921) 36-37. ↩︎
  7. Hiram Chittenden and Alfred Richardson, eds., Life, Letters, and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S.J., 1801-1873. (1905; New York, NY: Francis P. Harper, 1969), 1021-22.) ↩︎