No-wáy-ke-súg-gah, He Who Strikes Two at Once, a Brave

About this artwork

George Catlin described this portrait as a “sketch quite unfinished; beautiful dress, trimmed with a profusion of scalp-locks and eagles' quills; pipe in his hand, and necklace of grisly bears' claws.” The degree of finish in this portrait perhaps represents what Catlin hoped to achieve in the single sitting he normally allowed his Indian subjects. The artist probably painted No-wáy-ke-súg-gah at Fort Leavenworth (in today’s Kansas) in 1832. (Catlin, 1848 Catalogue, Catlin’s Indian Gal...

Art Historical Context

George Catlin's *No-wá-y-ke-súg-gah, He Who Strikes Two at Once, Brave* (1832) captures a striking portrait of an Otoe warrior, painted during the artist's ambitious travels across the American West. Catlin, a pioneering 19th-century painter dedicated much of his career to documenting Native American tribes through rapid, on-site sketches, fearing their cultures would vanish amid U.S. expansion. This full-length depiction likely originated at Fort Leavenworth present-day Kansas, amid the fur trade era when military outposts buzzed with tribal interactions. Catlin himself described the work as...

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 ...