George Catlin 1796 - 1872

Benjamin O'Fallon
Emily O'Fallon (his daughter), 1842
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1894

George Quimby, Indians of the Western Frontier: Paintings of George Catlin, Chicago, Illinois, 1954, pp. 30-31
William H. Truettner, The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin's Indian Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1979, IG 69
George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians written during Eight Years' Travel (1832–1839) amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America. 2 vols., New York, 1973, pl. 68

One Horn sat for one of the first portraits Catlin made in the field—and his endorsement of the artist brought Catlin many other sitters during the summer and fall of 1832.

Catlin first encountered the Sioux when staying with the American Fur Company traders William Laidlaw and Kenneth McKenzie at their post at Fort Pierre. Some six hundred families, representing twenty or more bands of Sioux, were encamped nearby in order to trade with the American Fur Company, providing Catlin with "Indian faces and Indian customs in abundance about me." Catlin believed the Sioux to be the most handsome and best dressed of all the native peoples he encountered, and he described One Horn in particular as possessing "a noble countenance, and a figure almost equaling Apollo" (Letters and Notes 1:208, 211).

The modest One Horn took his name "from a simple small shell that was hanging on his neck, which descended to him from his father, and which, he said, he valued more than anything he possessed [and] he chose to carry this name through life in preference to many others and more honourable ones he had a right to have taken, from different battles and exploits of his extraordinary life. He treated me with great kindness and attention, considering himself highly complimented by the signal and unprecedented honour I had conferred upon him by painting his portrait, and that before I had done any other.

"This extraordinary man, before he was raised to the dignity of chief, was the renowned of his tribe for his athletic achievements. In the chase he was foremost; he could run down a buffalo, which he had often done, on his own legs, and drive his arrow o the heart. He was the fleetest in the tribe; and in races he had run, he had always taken the prize.

"It was proverbial in his tribe, that Ha-wan-je-tah's bow never was drawn in vain, and his wigwam was abundantly furnished with scalps he had taken from his enemies' heads in battle (Letters and Notes 1:211).

After a long digression about his travels among the Poncas, Catlin describes the frantic reception that his portrait of One Horn received. The painting excited so much curiosity, Catlin relates, that his bark and hide studio was constantly surrounded by throngs of Indians. The artist finally recognized that "[n]othing short of hanging it out of doors on the side of my wigwam, would in any way answer them," and he then had the satisfaction of witnessing "the high admiration and respect they all felt for their chief, as well as the very great estimation in which they held me as a painter and a magician, conferring upon me at once the very distinguished appellation of Ee-cha-zoo-kah-ga-wa-kon (the medicine painter)."

But Catlin quickly learned that not everyone was pleased with his effort: "the doctors generally took a decided and noisy stand against the operations of my brush; haranguing the populace, and predicting bad luck, and premature death, to all who had submitted to so strange and unaccountable an operation! My business for some days was entirely at a standstill for want of sitters; for the doctors were opposing me with all their force; and the women and children were crying ... the most pitiful and doleful laments..."

Catlin's business—and perhaps the entire concept of his Indian Gallery—was saved by the intervention of One Horn. "In this sad and perplexing dilemma, this noble chief stepped forward, and addressing himself to the chiefs and the doctors, to the braves and to the women and children, he told them to be quiet, and to treat me with friendship; that I had been traveling a great way to see them, and smoke with them; that I was great medicine, to be sure; that I was a great chief, and that I was the friend of Mr. Laidlaw and Mr. M'Kenzie, who had prevailed upon him to sit for his picture, and fully assured him that there was no harm in it. His speech had the desired effect, and I was shaken hands with by hundreds of their worthies, many of whom were soon dressed and ornamented, prepared to sit for their portraits" (Letters and Notes 1:220–221).

One Horn also donated his costume to Catlin's Indian Gallery, and the painter seems to have taken especial care in depicting the elaborately beaded and painted elk-skin tunic, fringed with porcupine quills and scalp locks. The Smithsonian portrait of One Horn is virtually identical with this from the O'Fallon Collection, apart from some minor variation in the color of the bead patterns and its lack of coloring to the pictographs.

Catlin learned of One Horn's death several years later when he exhibited his portrait to a New York audience that included a visiting delegation of Sioux. One Horn's likeness was greeted by the Indians, not with the "sharp and startling yelp" that paintings of other Sioux chiefs received, but by the braves hanging down their heads and placing their hands over their mouths.