Traiteurs de fourrures descendant le Missouri

Bingham painted this quiet river scene in 1845, just as the American fur trade it shows was fading and steamboats were taking over the Missouri. An old French trapper and a boy glide downstream in a dugout canoe, the season's furs stacked behind them. Chained to the prow is a small dark animal whose identity nobody has ever settled; it has been called a bear cub, a fox and a cat. Bingham first titled the picture around the trapper and his half-French, half-Native son, but the American Art-Union that bought it renamed it to the vaguer Fur Traders and quietly dropped the mention of the boy's parentage. What is left is the still water, the morning mist, and the animal's reflection doubling it on the glassy surface.