Jackrabbits are a traditional food source for Taos Pueblo. Riders on horseback use blankets to drive the animals into a mill where hunters armed with bows and arrows, firearms, and clubs can harvest them. Hunting is a spiritual practice for the people. Berninghaus and Hennings, and other later Taos artists, also depicted the ceremonial Taos rabbit hunt. Ironically, the only true hunter amongst the TSA, Dunton, never painted this ceremonial hunt and had very strict and humane views on hunting.

Although The Rabbit Hunt shows a moment of Pueblo hunting, the painting also opens a window onto Phillips’s relationship with Taos Pueblo people. In addition to his role as an artist, Phillips served as a forest ranger when, in 1906, the federal government took over Blue Lake and Taos Pueblo’s ancestral lands. He was remembered for allowing Pueblo people to hunt and hold ceremonies without outside interference, activities that would be heavily restricted by his successors.

Taos Pueblo elder and artist John Suazo recalls, “When he was a ranger, he did real good towards us. . . . He was very generous, because he loved the Indians that he painted, so he treated them very well. . . . He did allow the Indians to do their hunting and their ceremonies without no conflict of anyone interfering.”