# Sky-se-ró-ka, Second Chief of the Tribe

- By: George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
- Date: 1834
- 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=4373)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/3df9d72f16a935d202632fab805c7978.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

In 1834, George Catlin accompanied a regiment of United States Dragoons to visit the territory of the Comanche, Kiowa, and Wichita. While at a Comanche village, he met Wichita chief Sky-se-ró-ka, whom he described as “a fine-looking and remarkably shrewd and intelligent man.” The sensitive modeling of Sky-se-ró-ka's features compares favorably to Catlin's best work on the dragoon expedition. (Catlin, 1848 Catalogue, Catlin’s Indian Gallery, SAAM online exhibition; Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)