# Coo-coo-coo, The Owl, an Aged Chief

- By: George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
- Date: 1836
- 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=4310)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/1e29c476522b50c0059cb715bb021936.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

George Catlin described Menominee chief Coo-coo-coo as a “very aged and emaciated chief, whom I painted at Green Bay, in Fort Howard. He had been a distinguished man, but now in his dotage, being more than 100 years old---and a great pet of the surgeon and officers of the post.” This portrait was painted in 1836 when Catlin stopped at Green Bay on his way to the Pipestone Quarry. (Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)