Interestingly, Hime divides the title of this photograph into three separate parts. The first part  -  "the prairie"  -  is a topographical label which in the late-nineteenth century was used to differentiate the Canadian West from the barren Great American Desert found south of the international border. The second part  -  "on the banks of Red River"  -  positioned the viewer in a location that was central to debates over the renewal of the Hudson's Bay Company's license to trade in the Northwest. The third part  -  "looking south"  -  directed the viewer's gaze toward the economic and political threats of American Manifest Destiny.

Manifest Destiny claimed the God-given right of the United States to the entire North American continent. The notion had gathered momentum since the mid-1840s and by the 1850s was discussed openly in Washington. For example, in 1853 the Ohio representative Hiram Bell called the annexation of Canada "something worth turning the attention of this nation to...." As far as Bell and his friends in Congress were concerned, "the annexation of that territory [Canada] to this Union ... Destiny has ordained, and it will ere long take place." With an American military post just beyond the horizon in Hime's photograph, and with the growing centre of trade and commerce further south at St. Paul, viewers of The prairie, on the banks of the Red River, looking south, in a sense, were encountering the symbolical northward gaze of American Manifest Destiny.