Chin-cha-pee, Fire Bug That Creeps, Wife of Pigeon's Egg Head
1832
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
1985.66.180
Tags
About this artwork
George Catlin painted Chin-cha-pee, wife of the Assiniboine warrior Pigeonâs Egg Head (see 1985.66.179), at Fort Union, in 1832. Catlin described the woman as âfine looking . . . in a handsome dress of the mountain-sheep skin, holding in her hand a stick curiously carved, with which every woman in this country is supplied; for the purpose of digging up the . . . prairie turnip.â (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 8, 1841; reprint 1973)
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 ...