Cáh-be-múb-bee, He Who Sits Everywhere, a Brave
1835
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
Accession Number
1985.66.187
Tags
About this artwork
In 1835, after his visit to Oklahoma, George Catlin journeyed up the Mississippi by steamer from New Orleans to Fort Snelling in present-day Minnesota, bringing his wife, Clara, on a western âtourâ for the first and only time. Tribes of the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes region, such as the Ojibwe/Chippewa shown here, had been increasingly pressured by European traders, war, and United States expansion since the eighteenth century. Well before Catlinâs arrival, the upper midwestern trib...
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 ...