Peter Quivey (ca. 1807–1869) was a pioneer who briefly joined the infamous Donner Party (1846), fortunately continuing beyond them into California. He fought in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), then in 1847 settled in San José, where he built the city’s first wood-frame house and hotel.

Quivey’s buckskin coat and pants recall the attire of Daniel Boone and David Crockett, America’s most famous frontiersmen. He holds a bowie knife and a Colt revolver, weapons that played key roles in the imperialist conquest of the American West. The artist emphasizes Quivey’s role as a mediator between the frontier and civilization by contrasting the primitive knife and the technologically sophisticated revolver, and the wild mountain lion and the trained hunting dog. Quivey’s dual identities as a frontiersman and an art patron, equally at ease on the prairie or in a parlor, illustrate the competing agendas of Gold Rush California.