Works of Art

During his early years as an artist-correspondent, Remington often accompanied cavalry units during their campaigns. He became an expert on the military equipment used in field service, including frontier methods of transportation such as the mule-driven freight wagon shown here. On one occasion, while riding with the Tenth Cavalry, Remington reported that the column was forced to halt after one of the “government six” wagons got stuck in a creek bed. “I sat on the top of the bank as the dismounted men and mules and whips and sand flew,” he reported, “while to my ears came the lashing, the stamping, yelling and profanity.” Freight haulers were legendary for their ability to cuss any recalitrant mule into submission. When in the field, Remington often carried a Kodak camera in order to take photographs of men, horses, and equipment for future reference in the studio. A number of photo scrapbooks that he put together still survive in the collections of the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York. One of them contains photographs of various types of wagons, including the type of heavy freight wagon seen in this drawing. Ink renditions such as these were often used as vignette illustrations in published articles or books.