Chee-a-ex-e-co, Daughter of Deer without a Heart

About this artwork

“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.” Chee-a-ex-e-co was the daughter of Yuchi chi...

Art Historical Context

In the mid-19th century, artist Georgelin embarked on an ambitious mission to document the lives and likenesses of Native American tribes the United States. Traveling to remote areas, he painted over 310 oil portraits of individuals in their native dress and surroundings, capturing a vanishing world amid rapid cultural changes. "Chee-a-ex-e-co, Daughter of Deer without Heart," created in 1838, this effort. The subject was the daughter of Yuchi chief Deer without a Heart, and Catlin painted her portrait—along with her father's—at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, in January of that y...

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 ...