Today the small town of Utica, Montana, near the Judith River and northeast of the Little Belt Mountains, rests amid fertile agricultural fields. In the 1880s, before the surrounding range was broken by the plow, the young Russell worked near there on annual roundups for a cattle syndicate. On January 12, 1887, the Fort Benton River Press carried a notice about Russell, “an artist of no ordinary ability,” who had already painted “the most spirited pictures of cowboy life we have ever seen.” The paper went on to report that Russell was currently at work on a painting a picture of “the buildings of Utica, with a lively cowcamp in the foreground.” That painting is shown here. The six-year old settlement is visible in the background, comprising a saloon, hotel, blacksmith shop, post office, general store, and other outbuildings. To the right in the distance, a stagecoach can be seen along the old Carroll Trail, which linked Lewistown and the mining camps to the south. In the early phase of his career, Russell viewed his world as a folk artist, and faithfully recorded every detail in the scene. In the foreground, he painted accurate likenesses of his fellow cowboys on the roundup, and many years later those men could still be identified. The painting tells a great deal about the cowboys’ gear. The third horse from the left carries a finely-tooled California saddle with pointed tapaderos. The fifth horse from the left, on the other hand, shows a much simpler Texas-style saddle that was adopted by the saddlemakers of Montana and Wyoming. A struggling cowboy further to the right attempts to control his bucking Appaloosa with a brightly-striped rawhide reata, doubtless handmade and highly prized. In the middle distance to the right, a cowboy herds a remuda of horses belonging to the outfit. This could easily be a self-portrait, for Russell worked as a horse wrangler during the roundups.