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Wah-ro-née-sah, The Surrounder, Chief of the Tribe
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1832
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 60.9 cm)
- Culture
- Indians of North America
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
George Catlin described this sitter as “quite an old man; his shirt made of the skin of a grizzly bear, with the claws on.” The Surrounder was chief of the Otoe tribe, who lived in spacious timber lodges perched on a ridge overlooking the Platte River. His bear claw necklace suggests he was a member of the Bear Clan, which shared leadership of the Otoes with the Buffalo Clan. Catlin probably painted The Surrounder at Fort Leavenworth (in today’s Kansas) in 1832. (Catlin, 1848 Catalogue, Catlin’s Indian Gallery, SAAM online exhibition)
