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We-chúsh-ta-dóo-ta, Red Man, a Distinguished Ball Player
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1835
- 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 painted two portraits of Sioux Indians with “ball-sticks” in hand while at Fort Snelling, near the juncture of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers. He described his subjects as “the two most distinguished ball-players in the Sioux tribe” who came to his studio “in the dress in which they had just struggled in the play.” This full-length portrait captures Red Man’s athleticism and reflects his status as a tribal champion. Catlin worried about the fate that he feared lay in store for these men. He wrote that “My heart has sometimes almost bled with pity for them, while amongst them, and witnessing their happy sports.” The artist was constantly reminded of “the inevitable bane that was rapidly advancing upon them.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 50, 1841, reprint 1973; Gurney and Heyman, eds., George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, 2002)
