Spearing by Moonlight - Chaco

Art Historical Context

George Catlin’s "Spearing by Moonlight Chaco," painted between 1854 and 1869, captures a nocturnal hunting scene rendered in oil on card mounted on paperboard. Measuring roughly 47 by 62 centimeters, the work’s portable support reflects the practical needs of an artist who extensively to record Indigenous life firsthand. Catlin, best known for his extensive documentation of Native American cultures, here turns his attention to the Chaco region, likely during his later South American journeys. The painting belongs to Catlin’s broader effort to preserve visual records of traditional practices that he feared were disappearing. By choosing moonlight as the setting, he emphasizes both the skill and the quiet drama of the spearing activity, inviting viewers to consider the relationship between people and their environment at a specific moment in time. Today the work resides in the National Gallery of Art’s Paul Mellon Collection, where it continues to offer insight into 19th-century cross-cultural encounters and the artist’s distinctive approach to ethnographic subject matter.

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 ...