Miller’s in Breakfast at Sunrise looks picnicky, but it’s how adventurers and hunters dined in the wild. As a camp artist for Capt. William Drummond Stewart, a Scottish adventurer, Miller
The hunters’ usual mess was served on a waterproof India rubber cloth. Food was served on tin plates: Forks were not used, and the meat was cut with a bowie knife. Miller indicates that the Euro-Americans usually ate first, and Native Americans ate in the second sitting.
Predictably, the meal was mostly meat—buffalo hump, especially, though other native game elk, beaver, bear, and game birds.
Featured Image: Alfred Jacob Miller. Breakfast at Sunrise (1867), watercolor on paper. Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland. The first version of this painting was done in 1837.
See https://alfredjacobmiller.com/artworks/breakfast-at-sunrise-3/