Ah'-kay-ee-pix-en, Woman Who Strikes Many

About this artwork

George Catlin painted Woman Who Strikes Many, a member of the Blackfoot/Siksika tribe, in 1832 at Fort Union, two thousand miles northwest of St. Louis, in the heart of Blackfoot and Crow country. He later wrote that she wore “a beautiful dress of the mountain-goats’ skin, and her robe of the young buffalo’s hide.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 5, 1841, reprint 1973; Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)

Art Historical Context

In 1832, renowned artist George Catlin captured dignified likeness of Ah'-kay-ee-pix-en, known as "Woman Who Strikes," a member of the Blackfoot (iksika) tribe. at remote Fort Union Trading Post—two thousand miles northwest of St. Louis deep in Blackfoot and Crow territory—this portrait is part of Catlin's ambitious mission to document Native American life and customs before widespread European American encroachment. As a pioneering ethnographer-artist, Catlin traveled across the Great Plains, creating over 600 portraits that offer invaluable glimpses into Indigenous cultures of the early 19th...

About the Artist

George Catlin · 1796–1872

George Catlin (1796–1872), born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Putnam Catlin and Polly Sutton—who had been captured by Native Americans during the 1778 Battle of Wyoming—initially pursued a legal career. Trained at Litchfield Law School, he was admitted to the bar in 1819 but abandoned law after two years to study art in Philadelphia in 1823. Self-taught as a portraitist, Catlin quickly gained ...