George Catlin 1796 - 1872

George Quimby, Indians of the Western Frontier: Paintings of George Catlin, Chicago, Illinois, 1954, pp. 8-9
William H. Truettner, The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin's Indian Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1979, IG 2
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. 283 

In the summer of 1832, Black Hawk gave his name to a brief but bloody Indian war. Black Hawk led a small band of Sauk and Fox people who refused, unlike most members of the tribe, to cede their Illinois homelands to settlers in exchange for a grant of land west of the Mississippi River. From April through August, Black Hawk was in almost constant retreat from a large militia force commanded by General Henry Atkinson (who counted among his soldiers Abraham Lincoln). At the end of August, Black Hawk surrendered at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and he and his principal warriors and advisors were taken in shackles to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis.

Returning from his first expedition to the Upper Missouri in October, Catlin painted the portraits of ten of the vanquished Sauk and Fox while they were imprisoned: Black Hawk; his sons Whirling Thunder and Roaring Thunder; his advisors White Cloud (called The Prophet) and Soup; and the braves The Ioway, The Swimmer, Bear's Fat, Little Stabbing Chief the Younger, and Sturgeon's Head.

"Muk-a-tah-mish-o-kah-kaik (the black hawk) is the man to whom I have alluded, as the leader of the 'Black Hawk war,' who was defeated by General Atkinson, and held a prisoner of war. ... This man, whose name has carried a sort of terror through the country where it has been sounded, has been distinguished as a speaker or councellor rather than a warrior. ... When I painted this chief, he was dressed in a plain suit of buckskin, with strings of wampum in his ears and on his neck, and held in his hand, his medicine-bag, which was the skin of a black hawk, from which he had taken his name, and the tail of which made him a fan, which he was almost constantly using" (Letters and Notes 2:211).

In the Smithsonian version of this portrait, Black Hawk wears fewer necklaces and his headdress lacks the decorative porcupine roach. A third oil portrait by Catlin also depicts Black Hawk wearing a roach; this painting was in the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania until 1971, when it was sold through the Kennedy Galleries.

Black Hawk made a tour of the principal eastern cities in 1837, visiting Catlin's Indian Galley in New York and sitting for a portrait by Charles Bird King in Washington.