Existing comment:
Trappers
Panel 22, 1956
The forceful shapes of two freshly killed Rocky Mountain elk dominate this composition. Their antlers -- often used for fighting -- contrast sharply against the blue and white snow of the foreground, which Lawrence spotted with fresh red blood dripping from the animals. Around 1812, fur trapping and trading among Salish, Nez Perce, and Euro-American people in the Bitterroot Valley (in present-day Montana) intensified. Lawrence envisioned the strung up prey as an allegory for the land, material resources, and freedoms at stake in the War of 1812 and ultimately ensnared by the expansionist legacies of the conflict. |