Peter was the brother of Thomas Moran, one of America’s foremost landscape painters. Peter followed in his brother’s footsteps and turned to the study of art, eventually gaining a reputation as an accomplished etcher of animals. He accompanied Thomas on a sketching trip to the Teton Range in 1879. In 1881, on his own, he made a trip to pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico. Like Gaul, he served as a special agent for the Eleventh Census in 1890. This painting shows indigenous Americans still armed, rich in horses, and living in traditional ways, suggesting that Moran painted it before the census, but after the trip to the Tetons.