Eteh-ée-fix-e-co, Deer Without a Heart, a Chief

About this artwork

George Catlin arrived at Fort Moultrie, in Charleston, South Carolina, on January 17, 1838. He painted more than ten portraits of Seminole and Yuchi Indians, including this portrait of Yuchi chief Eteh-ée-fix-e-co, in the short time he spent at the fort. (Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)

Art Historical Context

In 1838, renowned artist George Catlin captured dignified likeness of Eteh-é-e-fix-e-co, a Yuchi chief known as "Deer Without Heart," in this striking portrait. Catlin, a pioneering chronicler of Native American life, painted it during a stay at Fort Moultrie Charleston, South Carolina, he completed over ten portraits Seminole and Yuchi in just a short time His oil paintings, like one, exemplify his realistic, blending Romanticism's emphasis on nobility ethnographic precision to preserve vanishing amid rapid American expansion. The artwork emerges from a tense historical moment: the Seminole ...

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 ...