Verso:
Original artist’s label with signature
Exhibition label, National Cowboy Hall of Fame
Typed description of painting

In describing this painting John Clymer wrote, “For the purpose of establishing his Pacific Fur Company post at the mouth of the Columbia River, John Jacob Astor sent out two parties; one by sea on the ship, Tonquin, the other by land under Wilson Price Hunt. This party was known as the ‘Overland Astorians.’ For the proposed overland journey, Wilson Price Hunt and Donald McKenzie recruited a large party of voyageurs, French Canadian boatmen from Montreal and Mackinaw, a halfbreed interpreter with an Indian wife, and a number of hunters and trappers before embarking up the Missouri River from Saint Louis. On the way upriver they met John Hoback, Jacob Rezner and Edward Robinson, three trappers returning from the Rocky Mountains, who advised them to travel west overland to the headwaters of the Snake River so they would avoid contact with the fierce Blackfoot Indians. They traded for horses at the Arikara villages on the Missouri and on July 18th, with the three trappers as guides, started overland. Traveling across present South Dakota they reached the Black Hills which they skirted as they could find no passage through them. They kept on in the oppressive August heat over a rough, arid, broken country destitute of water and grass so there was not even any buffalo. These marches through the rugged, barren country with no water were very difficult for both horses and men. It was a great joy and relief when they would come to a small running stream where they could slake their thirst.”

PROVENANCE:
Al Mengert, Tacoma, Washington
Oklahoma Publishing Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Gaylord Broadcasting Company, by 1991
Property from a Private Collection

EXHIBITIONS:
Cowboy Artists of America Thirteenth Exhibition, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, October 20 - November 19, 1978
The West of John Clymer, National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, March 16 -November 24, 1991

LITERATURE:
Catalog, Cowboy Artists of America Thirteenth Exhibition (1978), illustrated

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