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Steeh-tcha-kó-me-co, Great King (called Ben Perryman), a Chief
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1834
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 60.9 cm)
- Culture
- Creek Indians
- 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
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
George Catlin described his images of Ben and Sam Perryman (see 1985.66.289) as “portraits of two distinguished men, and I believe, both chiefs . . . These two men are brothers, and are fair specimens of the tribe [Creek/Muskogee], who are mostly clad in calicoes, and other cloths of civilized manufacture; tasselled and fringed off by themselves in the most fantastic way, and sometimes with much true and picturesque taste.” Catlin painted this work at Fort Gibson, Arkansas Territory, in 1834. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 49, 1841; reprint 1973)
