# Bón-són-gee, New Fire, a Band Chief

- 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=4283)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/8d153fa719494fdb8ecdac1a1bd19d1e.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 called New Fire, a chief of the Kiowa, “a very good man” and described the ornaments hanging on his breast as a boar's tusk and a war whistle. Catlin painted this portrait at a Comanche village in 1834. (Catlin, <i>Letters and Notes</i>, vol. 2, no. 43, 1841; reprint 1973)