# Mi-néek-ee-súnk-te-ka, Mink, a Beautiful Girl

- By: George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
- Date: 1832
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 60.9 cm)
- Culture: Indians of North America
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=4275)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/1f67e9aebad74c025cb8b12978294e7f.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

According to George Catlin, Mink posed in a “mountain-sheep skin dress, ornamented with porcupine-quills, beads, and elk's teeth.” He described the Mandans as “people whose complexions appear as light as half breeds; and amongst the women particularly, there are many whose skins are almost white, with the most pleasing symmetry and proportion of features; with hazel, with grey, and with blue eyes,---with mildness and sweetness of expression, and excessive modesty of demeanour, which render them exceedingly pleasing and beautiful.” Catlin painted the girl’s portrait at a Mandan village in 1832. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 13, 1841, reprint 1973, and 1848 Catalogue, Catlin’s Indian Gallery, SAAM online exhibition)