CHARLES MARION RUSSELL | BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME (INDIAN GAME HUNT)

Kennedy Galleries, New York

Walter Reed Bimson, Phoenix, Arizona, 1955 (acquired from the above)

Valley National Bank of Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona

Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2004

Western Field & Stream, vol. 2, no. 7, December 1897, halftone illustrated p. 182

"Striking Pictures of Frontier Life," Field and Stream, vol. 3, no. 4, July 1898, illustrated p. XIX

Field and Stream, vol. 5, no. 1, January 1900, illustrated p. 25

Field and Stream, vol. 5, no. 12, January 1901, illustrated pp. 719, 773

Harold McCracken, The Charles M. Russell Book, Garden City, New York, 1957, p. 184, illustrated 

John Taliaferro, Charles M. Russell: The Life and Legend of America’s Cowboy Artist, Norman, Oklahoma, 2003, p. 115

Great Falls, Montana, C.M. Russell Gallery, Centennial Year, 1864-1964, April 1964, no. 673, illustrated n.p.

Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Art Center, Arts Collected By Banks in Arizona, October 1966, n.p.

Tucson, Arizona, University of Arizona Museum of Art, The West and Walter Bimson: Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, 1971, pp. 168, 221, illustrated p. 141

Wickenburg, Arizona, Wickenburg Museum, December 1975-January 1976 (on loan)

Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona Collects the West, October-December 1983, n.p.

Phoenix, Arizona, Walter Reed Bimson Gallery Of Western Art, The Valley National Bank of Arizona Fine Arts Collection, 1983, n.p.

Scottsdale, Arizona, Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Romance of the Range: The Horse in Western Art, October-December 1991, n.p.

Painted in 1897, the present work is a thoughtful manifestation of Charles Marion Russell's deep respect and intimate knowledge of the Native Americans of the Plains. Before the White Man Came (Indian Game Hunt) epitomizes Russell's desire to preserve the spirit of the West. Here, he portrays a scene that at once captures the first interactions of the Native Americans with the frontier settlers, while paying tribute to a culture and lifestyle in peril. 

Russell understood the profound relationship between the Native Americans and the vanishing frontier. Art historian Peter Hassrick explains, "That Indian, symbolizing the Rousseauian natural man, was the single most significant symbol of the West for Russell. He found their way of life far more profound than any of the ephemeral proficiencies of his fellow cowboys, and their traditions represented timeless and universal values that only the arts could preserve. Civilization had crushed the plains culture. Despite the fact that the artist's vocation as a cowboy had indirectly caused the final depletion of the bison, Russell followed a self-enlightened mandate to celebrate and preserve the Indian image as noble. Just as he struggled to humanize the cowboy, he strove to idealize the Indian" (Charles M. Russell, New York, 1989, p. 50).