Nót-to-way, a Chief

About this artwork

“Of this tribe I have painted but one . . . This was an excellent man, and was handsomely dressed for his picture . . . He seemed to be quite ignorant of the early history of his tribe, as well as of the position and condition of its few scattered remnants, who are yet in existence . . . though he was an Iroquois, which he was proud to acknowledge to me . . . he wished it to be generally thought, that he was a Chippeway.” George Catlin’s notes imply that Nót-to-way was living with the Oji...

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 ...