Arthur Jacob Miller and The Pony Express

Joe and I went to a free lecture at Ft. Caspar entitled "Alfred Jacob Miller and the 1837 Rendezvous". And as an added bonus, we found out that the Pony Express rider would be stopping by the Ft. Caspar museum. So, even though we'd left the Interpretive Trails thinking we'd miss the rider, we got lucky - the lecture and the rider!

Alfred Jacob Miller was one of the first artists to document in his work the adventures of mountain men and Native Americans in the American West in the early nineteenth century. It was in New Orleans where Scottish nobleman, Capt. William Drummond Stewart, recently retired from the British Army, visited with Miller.

Steward, who sought his own adventure in the American West, asked Miller to accompany him on an expedition in 1837. Steward wanted the artist to document one of the American frontier’s most exciting gatherings of white and native people; the annual Fur Trade Rendezvous, which in 1837 was located on the Green River in present day western Wyoming. Subsequently, Miller became famous for his depictions of western inhabitants in the early nineteenth century. Miller captured in his paintings a realistic yet romantic vision of Mountain men and Native Americans interacting at the Rendezvous on the Green River. There are very few journals or diaries of participants who attended the 1837 Rendezvous; Miller’s sketches and paintings are a valuable contribution that document one of the last Fur Trade gatherings in the American history.

and they finally arrived...