A Crow Village of Skin Tents on the Salmon River

Painted in 1862, the oil-on-card work was executed by George Catlin during his later years of documenting Indigenous life in the American West. It descended to his daughters, Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin, before being sold in 1912 to the American Museum of Natural History, which purchased it from Elizabeth Wing Catlin. In 1959 the museum deaccessioned the painting through Kennedy Galleries, New York, to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia.

Mellon gifted it in 1965 to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., where it was accessioned and remains in the collection.

Created in 1862, this oil painting on card, later mounted on paperboard, portrays a Crow village situated beside the Salmon River. A solitary tree rises amid a cluster of round, buffalo‑hide dwellings, offering a quiet snapshot of life along the riverbank during the mid‑nineteenth century.

At the time of its creation, the Crow nation was undergoing significant change due to increased contact with Euro‑American settlers. Catlin’s commitment to portraying indigenous life “as it was” placed his work within a broader movement of ethnographic documentation, contrasting with contemporary romanticized or fictionalized depictions of Native peoples.