In April 1887 Remington journeyed on a sketching expedition to the Canadian West. Traveling to Alberta, he headed north toward Calgary and attempted, with limited success, to sketch the Blackfeet along the Bow River. He collected a large number of artifacts on the trip, and some of them were incorporated into this painting, which he completed in his studio at a later date. The painting was reproduced in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in May 1891, and the subject was described as “a Cree, or perhaps a Blackfoot, whom one was apt to run across in the Selkirk Mountains or elsewhere on the plains on the British Territory, or well up north in the Rockies.”