Eeh-tow-wées-ka-zeet, He Who Has Eyes Behind Him (also known as Broken Arm), a Foremost Brave, by George Catlin, 1832
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Eeh-tow-wées-ka-zeet, He Who Has Eyes Behind Him (also known as Broken Arm), a Foremost Brave

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 may have painted Broken Arm, a member of the Plains Cree tribe, in St. Louis, at the same time the Light passed through the city on his way to Washington (see 1985.66.474). Broken Arm wears over his temples a pair of “hair pipes,” Bahamian conch shell ornaments distributed in the 1830s by white traders on the Upper Missouri. (Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)