Tchow-ee-pút-o-kaw, a Woman

About this artwork

“I have visited forty-eight different tribes, the greater part of which I found speaking different languages, and containing in all 400,000 souls. I have brought home safe, and in good order, 310 portraits in oil, all painted in their native dress, and in their own wigwams . . . as well as a very extensive and curious collection of their costumes, and all their other manufactures, from the size of a wigwam down to the size of a quill or a rattle.” George Catlin painted portraits of Creek/Mus...

Art Historical Context

**Tchow-ee-pút-o-kaw, a Woman** (1834) is a striking oil portrait by George Cat, the pioneering American artist who dedicated his career to documenting Native American life Captured during Catlin's travels in the Arkansas Territory at Fort Gibson, painting depicts a woman of the Creek (Muskogee) people in her native dress, part of his ambitious effort to preserve Indigenous cultures amid rapid change. Catlin, who visited 48 tribes and painted over 310 portraits "in their own wigwams," created this work as Western expansion threatened traditional ways. The Creek, one of the Five Civilized Tri...

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 ...