The Last Race, Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony
1832
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
Accession Number
1985.66.507
Tags
About this artwork
The O-kee-pa ceremony, which George Catlin witnessed on his travels along the Upper Missouri in 1832, was the centerpiece of the Mandan religious calendar. The annual enactment of the O-kee-pa was a four-day ritual that included the painful initiation of the most promising young men of the tribe. Catlin documented the ceremony in a series of paintings that were among the most important of his scenes of Native American rituals. The O-kee-pa began with the men sequestered inside a medicine lodge (...
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 ...