The painting depicts in its foreground several Native Americans, and a hatted figure with a walking stick, speculated to be Louis Hennepin, discoverer of the falls.

[4] The falls were a popular tourist attraction at the time and were depicted in many paintings, including works by Bierstadt, Henry Lewis, and George Catlin.

Like Lewis' work, Bierstadt's painting is an image of the falls before the construction of a dam in 1848 caused a disastrous collapse of the waterfall's main ledge in 1869.

Art historian Victor Koshkin-Youritzin said that the painting "contains many of the themes spiritually significant to 19th-century audiences—for example, suggestions of the far off, the arduous journey, and the magnificent natural splendors of the virgin wilderness.

"[8] Historian Paul Schneider said that the painting "shows the 600-yard-wide cascade as a panoramic shift in the crust of the earth, bathed in the painter's romantic evening light.