Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat

George Catlin, Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat, 1834-1835, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.346
Copied George Catlin, Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat, 1834-1835, oil on canvas, 2027 14 in. (50.969.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.346
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Artwork Details

Title
Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat
Date
1834-1835
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
2027 14 in. (50.969.3 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on canvas
Classifications
Keywords
  • Figure group
  • Occupation — domestic — cooking
  • Animal — dog
  • Indian — Comanche
  • Architecture Exterior — domestic — teepee
Object Number
1985.66.346

Artwork Description

“The village of the Camanchees,” George Catlin wrote, “is composed of six or eight hundred skin-covered lodges, made of poles and buffalo skins, in the manner precisely as those of the Sioux and other Missouri tribes . . . This village with its thousands of wild inmates, with horses and dogs, and wild sports and domestic occupations, presents a most curious scene; and the manners and looks of the people, a rich subject for the brush and the pen . . . In the view I have made of it, but a small portion of the village is shewn; which is as well as to shew the whole of it, inasmuch as the wigwams, as well as the customs, are the same in every part of it. In the foreground is seen the wigwam of the chief; and in various parts, crotches and poles, on which the women are drying meat, and ‘graining’ buffalo robes.” The artist sketched this image at a Comanche village in 1834. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 42, 1841; reprint 1973)

Exhibitions

Media - 1985.66.404 - SAAM-1985.66.404_1 - 9039
Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists
October 11, 2019November 22, 2020
Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists examines representations of buffalo and their integration into the lives of Native Americans on the Great Plains in the 1830s and in the twentieth century.