The Old Dragoons of 1850

The Old Dragoons of 1850

Frederic Remington

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Remington’s ambitious group includes five horses and four riders: two Euro-American cavalrymen, from the United States Regiment of Dragoons, and two Native Americans. The Dragoons, who patrolled the land west of the Mississippi River, have closed in on the fleeing riders, and the men are locked in hand-to-hand combat. While the soldiers’ uniforms, rifles, and accoutrements are historically correct for 1850, the Indigenous figures represent stereotypes the artist incorporated into his work based on travels through the American West in the 1880s and 1890s.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.