Tchung-kee, a Mandan Game Played with a Ring and Pole

About this artwork

“The game of Tchung-kee [is] a beautiful athletic exercise, which [the Mandan] seem to be almost unceasingly practicing whilst the weather is fair, and they have nothing else of moment to demand their attention. This game is decidedly their favourite amusement, and is played near to the village on a pavement of clay, which has been used for that purpose until it has become as smooth and hard as a floor . . . The play commences with two (one from each party), who start off upon a trot, abreast ...

Art Historical Context

George Catlin's *Tchung-kee, a Mandan Game Played with Ring and Pole* (2–1833) vividly captures a dynamic moment in Mandan village life along the Upper Missouri River. As a pioneering 19th-century American artist, Catlin immersed himself among Plains tribes, creating realistic oil paintings that served as ethnographic records. His style—precise, observational, and unromanticized—aimed to preserve Native cultures amid rapid change from Euro-American expansion. This work, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum showcases athletic Mandan men in action, their bare torsos and focused expressions...

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 ...