Hón-je-a-pút-o, Wife of Bear-catcher

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.” George Catlin probably painted Hón-je-a-pú...

Art Historical Context

George Catlin's *Hón-je-a-pú-t-o, Wife of Bear-catcher* (1832) captures the dignified likeness of a woman from the Kansas (K) tribe, painted on-site at Fort Leavenworth in present-day. As one of Catlin's oil portraits, it exemplifies his mission to document Native American peoples their authentic environments, dressed in traditional attire within their wigwams. Catlin, a pioneering artist and ethnographer, traveled extensively across the American West, producing over 310 such portraits to preserve vanishing cultures amid rapid encroachment by settlers. This work holds profound historical sign...

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 ...