George CatlinAmerican, 1796–1872Shee-náh-wee
May one see it?
Unknown: the museum keeps its counsel
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, D.C., United States
The owner is known. Whether it is on view today, the museum does not say, and we were not trained to guess.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the painting
“I have visited forty-eight different tribes, the greater part of which I found speaking different languages, and containing in all 400,000 souls. I have brought home safe, and in good order, 310 portraits in oil, all painted in their native dress, and in their own wigwams . . . as well as a very extensive and curious collection of their costumes, and all their other manufactures, from the size of a wigwam down to the size of a quill or a rattle.” George Catlin probably painted Shee-náh-wee, a member of the Kickapoo tribe, at Fort Leavenworth (in today’s Kansas) in 1830. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 1, 1841; reprint 1973)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1985.66.245
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 6 days ago
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0
Meanwhile, in the life of George Catlin
The whole life1828
Married: Clara Bartlett Gregory Catlin
1830
First journey west with Governor Clark
He accompanies William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory, on a diplomatic mission to Fort Crawford and then up the Mississippi into Native territory.
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.