The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas

George Catlin

National Gallery of Art

This vertical portrait shows the head, shoulders, and chest of an indiginous Iowan man with brown skin whose face is mostly painted with red and green. His body and face are angled to our right and he looks into the distance with dark eyes. Crimson-red paint covers his forehead, the sides of his cheeks, and neck. Four parallel lines of pine green angle up his right cheek, on our left, like the four fingers of a hand. A green line on the other cheek could be the thumb, and the palm might have left the green mark on his chin. The man’s nose and cheeks near the nose are unpainted. His spiky headdress is ornamented with two feathers and is held in place with a wide band of dark fur that wraps across his forehead and around the back of his head. Earrings hang from the lobes and tops of his ears, and he wears a necklace made up of bear claws, beads, and seashells, including an oval shaped, medallion-like shell at his throat. His garment is made up of white fur and what appears to be tawny-brown animal hide. Tan-colored clouds create a screen across an ice-blue sky in the background.