Russell modeled this powerful allegorical sculpture approximately six months before his death. At the time, he was suffering from serious ailments that would require surgery at the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, a few weeks later. It is hard not to imagine that the subject of this work referred in some ways to the artist’s own battles with his declining health. It is not known whether Russell ever saw a finished version of the bronze before his death in 1926; quite possibly one cast was sent from Roman Bronze Works to Great Falls in the summer or fall of that year, but the first known cast that was sold was not documented until the following November. Whether he saw it in bronze or not, it nevertheless represents one of the most animated and evocative sculptures Russell ever produced. The story depicted in the bronze was based on Indian legends about bitter starvation winters; the winter of 1826, for example, was known to northern plains people as “The Winter of the Wolves” for its great ferocity and the number of people who perished in it. The Blackfeet believed that winter was brought by “Coldmaker,” a deity of nature, and Russell’s The Spirit of Winter was said to represent a specific legend of that tribe. According to Nancy Russell, the subject was based on a Piegan legend about a warrior who was not treated kindly by his people. After his death, unusually severe winter weather struck the region. The wolves, ravenous with hunger, attacked the funerary bier of the dead warrior. “In the melee which ensued, the spectral form arose to its feet,” Mrs. Russell wrote. “With gaunt hands, it drew the tattered buffalo robe around a shadowy form. The shroud, whipped by a terrific gale, encased two hollow but seeing eyes. The driving blizzard drifts the powdery snow at his every step, as he leads the hungry ferocious denizens of the plains, nearer to the camps of his people who had so illtreated him. The Piegans saw the wolves; they marveled, they feared, they repented.”