# Eeh-nís-kim, Crystal Stone, Wife of the Chief

- 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=4020)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/f01ed85082a0f551ddeb6c4240dff184.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

“I have also placed upon my canvas \[Crystal Stone\]; her countenance is rather pleasing, which is an uncommon thing amongst the Blackfeet---her dress is made of skins, and being the youngest of a bevy of six or eight, and the last one taken under his \[the chief's\] guardianship, was smiled upon with great satisfaction.” Crystal Stone was the youngest wife of the Blackfoot chief Buffalo Bull’s Back Fat, the “apple of his eye” and “exempted . . . from the drudgeries of the camp.” George Catlin painted this work at Fort Union in the upper Midwest in 1832. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 5, 1841; reprint 1973)