I am an American...quadruped

I was born in the late 1840's in the San Francisco Mountains of Arizona. In 1851, an expedition led by Lorenzo Sitgreaves down the Zuni and Colorado Rivers crossed my path. In an effort to record, map and illustrate unchartered land and unknown flora and fauna, I was collected and named by Samuel Washington Woodhouse and first drawn by his fellow topographer, artist Richard H. Kern. My Latin title, Sciurus Abertii, was given in honor of Colonel J.J. Abert, chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, to whom much of our country’s early natural sciences is credited. Though the remainder of the two year expedition was undertaken at great peril to my captors and even at the expense of more lives, my post-mortem defining moment was yet to be realized.

We traveled through Arizona to San Diego, California, where after a brief stay I was carried aboard The Seabird sailing for San Francisco where we transferred to a Pacific mail steamer on route to Nicaragua then onward to Philadelphia where I was finally donated to The Academy of Natural Sciences.  In death, I bore witness to the life of the new West: the development of the cities given birth by exploration and fueled by the search for gold.

The names associated with my past only hint at my ultimate immortality as bestowed upon me by John Woodhouse Audubon.  The monumental volumes The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America was a family collaboration between John James Audubon and his sons Victor Gifford Audubon and John Woodhouse Audubon.   Painted directly from my pelt, then translated to plate #153, my image has since been printed and reprinted time and again.  

Now after 150 years, my original portrait painted by John Woodhouse Audubon has been rediscovered to be collected and brought to light.