Paul Kane was born in Ireland and visited Toronto as a child. He studied painting at Upper Canada College and after working in Michigan and Alabama, he went to Europe from 1841 to 1845. Kane returned to Canada in 1845 and made an extended journey into the Hudson’s Bay Company territories of Western Canada. He traveled by snowshoe, horseback and canoe to depict the Native Americans of the region in his paintings. In the late 1840s, Kane returned to Eastern Canada. Much of Kane’s work from his journey to the HBC territories is in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto and in the Parliament buildings in Ottawa.