Ee-tów-o-kaum, Both Sides of the River, Chief of the Tribe

About this artwork

George Catlin probably painted Ee-tów-o-kaum, chief of the Mahican tribe, at Green Bay (in today’s Wisconsin) in 1836. In Letters and Notes, his extensive writings on his travels and visits to Native American tribes across the West, Catlin described the Mahican as a “once powerful and still famous tribe, residing . . . in the territory of Wisconsin,” where they settled after leaving New York in 1833. He painted the chief at “full length, with a psalm-book in one hand, and a cane in the other . ....

Art Historical Context

George Catlin's 1836 portrait, *Ee-tów-o-kaum, Both of the River, Chief the Tribe*, captures theican leader at Green Bay, Wisconsin, the artist's ambitious travels to document Native American life. Catlin, a pioneering 19th-century painter, created over 600 portraits and landscapes to preserve Indigenous cultures amid rapid U.S. expansion. The Mahican, once a powerful New York-based tribe, had relocated to Wisconsin's Stockbridge area just three years earlier, highlighting the forced migrations of the era. Painted at full length, Ee-tów-o-kaum holds a psalm-book in one hand and a cane in the ...

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 ...