Kihn specialized in Indian portraits after he took his first trip outwest in 1920 to Montana and New Mexico. He then had one-man shows at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe in 1921 after spending three months among the Blackfeet Indians. The next year he had a one-man show of his Indian portraits in New York that was a great success. Soon after, the Canadian Pacific Railways sent Kihn to Banff, Vancouver and the Northwest to paint the native inhabitants. The present work is most likely from that time spent with those inhabitants.