Comanche Meeting the Dragoons

1834-1835 · Painting · 60.9 × 73.7 cm

Can I see it?

Unknown

Where is “Comanche Meeting the Dragoons” now? Collection: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Unknown.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Washington, D.C., United States

The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.

In this state since: Sep 25, 2026
Source: The museum

On the map Museum page

About the painting

“Col. Dodge ordered the command to halt, while he rode forward with a few of his staff, and an ensign carrying a white flag. I joined this advance, and the Indians stood their ground until we had come within half a mile of them, and could distinctly observe all their numbers and movements. We then came to a halt, and the white flag was sent a little in advance, and waved as a signal for them to approach; at which one of their party galloped out in advance of the war-party, on a milk white horse, carrying a piece of white buffalo skin on the point of his long lance in reply to our flag . . . This moment was the commencement of one of the most thrilling and beautiful scenes I ever witnessed. All eyes, both from his own party and ours, were fixed upon the manoeuvres of this gallant little fellow, and he well knew it . . .

Read on

He at length came prancing and leaping along till he met the flag of the regiment, when he leaned his spear for a moment against it, looking the bearer full in the face, when he wheeled his horse, and dashed up to Col. Dodge with his extended hand, which was instantly grasped and shaken.” George Catlin sketched this scene in 1834, when he accompanied the United States Dragoons to Indian Territory. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 41, 1841; reprint 1973)

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Details

Accession number: 1985.66.488

What it shows

Soldiers Westward expansion Occupations Man Figure group History Military subjects

In the catalog

Paintings Oil American painting Romanticism 19th century

Sources

Smithsonian American Art Museum
Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0

In the life of George Catlin

The whole life

1830–1836
Five journeys into the American West
St. Louis was his base for the five trips and the steamer Yellowstone of the American Fur Company his first transport; he visited 48 tribes in all (other accounts say about fifty). On trips along the Arkansas, Red and Mississippi rivers, in Florida and around the Great Lakes he painted more than 500 pictures and gathered a substantial collection of artifacts.
1832
Up the Missouri to Fort Union
He ascends the Missouri more than 3,000 km to the Fort Union trading post (today on the North Dakota–Montana border) and spends several weeks among peoples little touched by European culture. Visiting eighteen tribes, among them the Pawnee, Omaha, Ponca, Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine and Blackfeet, he paints the most vivid portraits of his career.
March 1833
Prince Maximilian’s expedition sees his work
At Major O’Fallon’s country estate near St. Louis, members of Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied’s scientific and ethnographic expedition look over the works from Catlin’s first Missouri expedition, among them the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, who later painted many Native American portraits and scenes of his own.
spring 1834
Fort Gibson: portraits of Cherokee, Choctaw, Osage
Leaving New Orleans for Fort Gibson in Indian Territory, he paints portraits of Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, Osage and other Native Americans.
19 June 1834
With the dragoons onto the Southern Plains
He sets out onto the Southern Plains with a dragoon detachment led by Henry Leavenworth and Henry Dodge, and visits Comanche and Wichita lands.
1836
First exhibition: about 500 works
Catlin’s first exhibition takes place in the United States, with about 500 works, but it makes little public stir.