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Shé-de-ah, Wild Sage, a Wichita Woman
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
- 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 probably painted this portrait of Wild Sage at Fort Gibson, in present-day northeastern Oklahoma. Catlin noted that she was one of two young women who had been held prisoner by the Osages, and purchased and returned to her own tribe by the Indian commissioner. “Amongst the women of this tribe [Wichita], there were many that were exceedingly pretty in feature and in form; and also in expression, though their skins are very dark . . . [They] are always decently and comfortably clad, being covered generally with a gown or slip, that reaches from the chin quite down to the ankles, made of deer or elk skins.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 43, 1841; reprint 1973)
