I'd say it's morning, mid-summer in the calendar year. You know the type: a slight haze lies over just about everything. All seems veiled, the horizon barely discernible. What shrouds everything isn't fog, but a wet glaze you can feel against your face. I'd say, likely as not it's July.
Two men sit in a cottonwood canoe, in no particular hurry. They're toting a bundle of furs downriver, right here on the Missouri. A slight wind carries smoke from the man's pipe out behind him in a silver ribbon.
The man's not dressed like a trapper. His flouncy pink blouse makes him look more of a dandy than a mountain man--and that hat would be a joke if history didn't tell us it had a name and a story. It's "a freedom hat," a stocking cap--a toque, this Frenchman would call it, that at one time--at his time--veritably proclaimed his assertion of liberty. It's a "liberty hat," circa 1820, its roots in rebel gay Paree, and it's worn with pride, here, on the American frontier by an icon, the fur trapper.
The canoe rides low in the river because the catch has been substantial. A kid is hanging over the bundle, smiling happily, and why wouldn't he? It's a golden summer morning, their trek into the wilds has been successful, and the two of them are bound home or somewhere to sell the bounty. A tranquil July morning on the Missouri River. You know the type.
Fur Trappers descending the Missouri is without a doubt George Caleb Bingham's most famous painting. It catches river trapping lore as fittingly as a coonskin cap or a Bowie knife. Bingham's famous painting rode the back cover of the American Lit anthology I used through twenty years of teaching. Always loved it because it seemed so, well, home. Those two are right here, after all, on our Missouri River.
But the painting wasn't always named that way. Bingham titled it Fur Trader, Half-breed Son, a title thought by some to be scandalously un-p.c., the word half-breed not to be spoken in mixed company. Fur Trappers descending the Missouri is far more heroic than Fur Trader, Half-breed Son, and vastly less embarrassing.
But I think it's helpful to know what George Caleb Bingham intended. He meant that kid in the middle of the canoe--he gave him jet black hair, after all--to be the son of Native American woman, the Frenchman's wife maybe, then again maybe not. While the term half-breed and the original title risks offense, it also defines the moment in 19th century river history when Euro- and Native Americans got along in almost every way--royally, if I can use that word in a painting all about liberty.
And then there's the third canoe character, the cat, a black cat, ears perked, watching the artist maybe, and seemingly not in the least nervous or worried about being aboard a cottonwood canoe with nothing on either side by Missouri River. A cat. I wish you could see it. A black cat on the Missouri canoe.
Now you might think--I certainly did--that there was no excuse for George Caleb Bingham to put a cat on the canoe, no reason but one: Bingham was a cat-lover.
Whether he was or not is immaterial. Turns out Sioux City, Iowa, likely had a multitude of cats back then because every last steamboat to come up river needed mousers lots of them. River vessels of all types and sizes hosted mice and rats by the dozen, even hundreds, enough to chew up through cargo and push the ships belly-up.
Even fur trappers needed cats because mice could hide in indiscernable cracks and destroy a year's furs without breaking a sweat. Cats were put to work, even canoe cats. They weren't doled handouts. Bingham's jet black feline looks arrogant up there in front of the canoe, but then most cats are.
And they had a right to be. If those two guys behind were all about liberty, someone, after all, had to remind the viewer that liberty didn't come without cost. Someone had to tend the bounty, be sure all those goods made it home.
It's all there in a famous old painting, an image that feels at home right here, despite all the years and the change. Somehow, it's still right here in the neighborhood. If you want to be particular, Bingham's particular school of painting is called luminist, because its landscape is so tranquil in the generous morning light.
Maybe. But who cares? We know that morning is neither unique or rare, because Bingham's particular morning is still here, still ours.
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