Mah-to-he-ha
Artist
George Catlin
(American, 1796 - 1872)
Date1852
Mediumpencil and watercolor on cardboard
DimensionsSheet: 17 3/8 x 22 3/4 inches (44.1 x 57.8 cm)
Credit LineBequest of H.J. Lutcher Stark, 1965
Object number11.77.2.Q
ClassificationsPaper
DescriptionPages are now separate. Original worn buckrum binding, black leather corners and spine, gold lines. Encased in a red portfolio.Label TextIn the 1830s, Catlin traveled to the West to record and document Indian peoples and their customs. He painted nearly 500 portraits and scenes of life. He used his paintings to make other later versions. While visiting the Mandan, Catlin painted Mah-to-he-ha (the Old Bear), a Mandan doctor, or medicine man, as he performed a ceremony for a dying patient. Catlin wrote that the women and children of the tribe, with their hands over their mouths, groaned and cried. In the background, Catlin depicted the round earth lodges of the Mandan village. The village was on the Missouri River in present-day North Dakota.
ProvenancePurchased June 11, 1956 through (Charles Eberstadt, Edward Eberstadt & Sons, New York, New York) by H.J. Lutcher Stark [1887-1965]; bequeathed September 2, 1965 to the Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation; accessioned to the Stark Museum of Art
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