Native Americans on Horseback

What was Charles Russell’s relationship to Native Americans? He is known as a painter of “cowboys and Indians, ” but the nuances of his life and work are predictably more complicated. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, he left school for Montana at age 16, where he worked on a sheep ranch as a cowboy. During the summer of 1888, Russell lived near the Piegan and the Kainai Nation, members of the Blackfeet Confederacy. His interaction with these communities was always at a distance but his observations fueled his art. Russell may have stood out in his time by expressing support for some Native American issues but from today’s vantage point his work romanticizes and others Native people in a perpetual past.