Russell’s careful observations of the Blackfeet and other tribes led him to create works that depicted imaginary scenes from an earlier time, when the Indians roamed freely on the Montana plains. This painting takes its title from a rare type of bison robe that was noted for its fine hair and soft sheen. Here the women have removed the flesh from the skin side of the hide and staked it to the ground to stretch it. They are now chipping it with special implements to reduce the hide to approximately half its original thickness. Russell has delineated these implements so carefully that one wonders whether he had an example in his artifact collection. Such tools were fashioned from the leg bone of an elk or a bison, with a blade of stone or metal securely tied on. The woman bending over her task has well-painted leggings and a fine tack-studded knife sheath, but it is unlikely she would have been wearing such fine clothing for what was a dirty, smelly job. Her indigo-colored skirt was made of stroud cloth, a type of wool fabric made in England for purposes of trade. The Blackfoot men are shown lolling about, since they were expected only to hunt and kill the bison—not prepare the hide, which was the women’s job. Just behind the figures can be seen the travois poles elevated to hold a Blackfoot family’s medicine bundle, a group of sacred objects that were not allowed to touch the ground. Although the tipis are not very accurately painted, Russell did manage to show their tops blackened by the smoke of numerous fires within. The smoke caused the hides at the top to become tough, and the material was eventually recycled as containers or moccasin soles when that part of the tipi cover was replaced.