SUN-A-GET or Hard Times; A Pottawatomie Chief, from The Aboriginal Portfolio
1835
Medium
Graphic Arts-Print
Classification
Graphic Arts-Print
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of H. Lyman Sayen to his nation
Accession Number
1973.167.21
Tags
Art Historical Context
**SUN-A-GET or Times; A Pottawatomie Chief** (1835) by James Lewis is a poignant lithograph from *The Aboriginal Portfolio*, one the earliest published collections of Native American portraits. Lewis, a self-taught artist and traveler, sketched Indigenous leaders during gatherings like treaty signings in the 1820s, capturing their likenesses with remarkable detail before reproducing them via lithography—a revolutionary printing technique that allowed wider dissemination of these images. This portrait depicts Sun-a-Get, a Potawatomi (Pottawatomie) chief, whose name translates to "Hard Times," ...