Indian Family Alarmed at the Approach of a Prairie Fire

About this artwork

“The prairies burning form some of the most beautiful scenes that are to be witnessed in this country, and also some of the most sublime. Every acre of these vast prairies (being covered for hundreds and hundreds of miles, with a crop of grass, which dies and dries in the fall) burns over during the fall or early in the spring, leaving the ground of a black and doleful colour . . . There are many modes by which the fire is communicated to them, both by white men and by Indians---par accident; ...

Art Historical Context

George Catlin's *Indian Family Alarmed at the Approach of a Prairie* (1846–1848) captures a tense moment on the vast American prairies, where a Native American family reacts in alarm to an encroaching wildfire. Painted in oil and housed in the Smithsonian American Art, the scene features a teepee, a family group, and the dramatic sweep of open plains under threat from flames—evoking both beauty and peril in the untamed West. Catlin, a pioneering 19th-century artist and ethnographer, documented Native American life and landscapes during his travels across the Great Plains in the 1830s. In his ...

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 ...