About this work
- **Medium & date:** Transparent and opaque watercolor and graphite on paper, 1890, 18 x 13 in., held at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
**Subject:** Lt. Samuel Churchill Robertson, who commanded Crow Indian scouts (Troop L, 1st Cavalry) at Fort Custer, Montana
**Publication context:** The watercolor served as the basis for a colour lithograph illustration in Harper's Weekly (Feb. 13, 1892), accompanying Robertson's article "Our Indian Contingent"
**Keyword tags confirm visual elements:** horse, portrait, hat, gloves, brown tones — a mounted portrait
**Historical context:** Created in the immediate wake of the Ghost Dance War / Pine Ridge Campaign; the U.S. Army's experiment enlisting Native Americans as regular soldiers; Remington worked from photographs by Orlando Scott Goff
*Lieutenant S. C. Robertson, Chief of the Crow Scouts* is a transparent and opaque watercolor with graphite on paper, measuring 18 by 13 inches and dated 1890. The work presents a near-vertical, intimate portrait format — a mounted U.S. Army officer rendered with the kind of specificity Remington reserved for subjects he had encountered firsthand. The composition centres on a figure in a hat and gloves, rendered in warm browns, the horse and rider filling the picture plane with quiet authority. Remington's handling of watercolor here is characteristically precise yet fluid — the officer's uniform reads as lived-in and weathered rather than ceremonial, the tones of earth, leather, and dust binding man and animal into a single, self-contained presence. It is a portrait of a working soldier, not a parade-ground one.
The subject is Lieutenant Samuel Churchill Robertson, who commanded Native American Crow men of Troop L, 1st Cavalry at Fort Custer, Montana. Remington created the watercolor to serve as the basis for illustrations accompanying Robertson's own article, "Our Indian Contingent," published in *Harper's Weekly* on February 13, 1892.
Originally conceived in collaboration with frontier photographer Orlando Scott Goff, whose photographs were ultimately replaced in *Harper's Weekly* by Remington's artwork, this image belongs to a suite of work documenting what was, at the time, a closely watched military experiment. Termed a "noble experiment" by some observers, the initiative to integrate Native American soldiers into regular cavalry units attracted both scrutiny and resistance, and the experiment ultimately fizzled out after the untimely deaths of the young officers who led it. Remington made the watercolor in the immediate shadow of Wounded Knee — a moment when the frontier world he had been racing to document was, in the starkest terms, closing.
This is a piece for someone who values portraiture with historical weight — the kind of image that rewards extended looking. Its vertical format and contained palette make it well-suited to a library, a study, or a hallway where a single strong work can hold its own without competition. The warm, muted browns and the stillness of the composition mean it reads equally well in
