Catlin described White Cloud as "clothed in very white dressed deer-skins.… He carries with him a huge pipe, a yard in length, with a stem ornamented with the neck feathers of a duck.… To its center is attached a fan of feathers." White Cloud, who was part Sac and Winnebago, helped plot the Black Hawk War and was imprisoned at Jefferson Barracks, several miles from St. Louis, when Catlin painted this portrait.