Artwork Details
- Title
- Shoo-de-gá-cha, The Smoke, Chief of the Tribe
- Artist
- Date
- 1832
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 60.9 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on canvas
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Portrait male — Smoke — full length
- Portrait male — Smoke
- Indian — Ponca
- Dress — Indian dress
- Object Number
- 1985.66.95
Artwork Description
George Catlin described The Smoke, chief of the Ponca tribe, in his travel accounts: “The chief, who was wrapped in a buffalo robe, is a noble specimen of native dignity and philosophy. I conversed much with him; and from his dignified manners, as well as from the soundness of his reasoning, I became fully convinced that he deserved to be the sachem of a more numerous and prosperous tribe. He related to me with great coolness and frankness, the poverty and distress of his nation; and with the method of a philosopher, predicted the certain and rapid extinction of his tribe, which he had not the power to avert . . . He sat upon the deck of the steamer, overlooking the little cluster of his wigwams mingled amongst the trees; and, like Caius Marius, weeping over the ruins of Carthage, shed tears as he was descanting on the poverty of his ill-fated little community.” The artist painted this image at a Ponca village in 1832, apparently on his voyage up the Missouri River. (Catlin, Letters and Notes , vol. 1, no. 26, 1841; reprint 1973)