George CatlinAmerican, 1796–1872Slave Dance, Sac and Fox
May one see it?
Unknown
Washington, D.C., United States
The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
“The slave-dance is a picturesque scene, and the custom in which it is founded a very curious one. This tribe has a society which they call the ‘slaves’ composed of a number of the young men of the best families in the tribe, who volunteer to be slaves for the term of two years, and subject to perform any menial service that the chief may order, no matter how humiliating or how degrading it may be; by which, after serving their two years, they are exempt for the rest of their lives, on war-parties or other excursions, or wherever they may be---from all labour or degrading occupations, such as cooking, making fires, &c. &c. . . . These young men elect one from their numbers to be their master, and all agree to obey his command whatever it may be, and which is given to him by one of the chiefs of the tribe. On a certain day or season of the year, they have to themselves a great feast, and preparatory to it the above-mentioned dance.” George Catlin created sketches of the dance at a Sac and Fox village in 1835. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 56, 1841; reprint 1973)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1985.66.450
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0
Meanwhile, in the life of George Catlin
The whole life1830–1836
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.
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.
1838
The Indian Gallery and public lectures
Back in the East, he gathers his paintings and Native artifacts into his own Indian Gallery and begins giving lectures on life among the Indians, touring Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and New York with the show. The paintings hang salon-style, in rows one above another, and visitors identify them by catalogue numbers.
May 1838
Congress declines to buy the Indian Gallery
The U.S. Congress rebuffs his offer to sell the collection: Catlin wanted his life’s work kept intact, but his later efforts to persuade officials in Washington failed as well.
after 1839
Gallery shows in London, Brussels and Paris
As a showman and entrepreneur, he draws public interest to the Indian Gallery with exhibitions in London, Brussels and Paris (including the Louvre). Charles Baudelaire praised him for bringing back to life the nobility and manliness of the chiefs.
November 1839
Moves his family to England
Finding no response in America to his view of Native culture, and hoping for a more receptive audience after Congress turned him down, he takes his family and collection across the Atlantic to England.