A Pawnee Warrior Sacrificing His Favorite Horse

George Catlin painted A Pawnee Warrior Sacrificing His Favorite Horse in 1865, working in oil on card mounted on paperboard. The work descended from Catlin to his daughters Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin. In 1912 the American Museum of Natural History purchased the painting from Elizabeth Wing Catlin.

The museum sold it in 1959 through Kennedy Galleries in New York to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia, who gave it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1965, where it remains in the collection.

Painted in 1865, George Catlin's A Pawnee Warrior Sacrificing His Favorite Horse entered the National Gallery of Art through a series of transactions beginning with the artist's descendants and culminating in a 1965 gift from Paul Mellon. The work has been interpreted as a depiction of a Pawnee ritual, reflecting both nineteenth-century ethnographic interest and Catlin's broader mission to document Native American life. As part of the NGA's collection since the mid-twentieth century, it remains a key piece for understanding the artist's engagement with religious and ceremonial subjects within the context of nineteenth-century American art and westward expansion.

Created in 1865, this oil painting on card, later mounted on paperboard, depicts a Pawnee warrior engaged in a ritual sacrifice of his prized horse. The work belongs to the American folk tradition and is catalogued as religious art, reflecting the artist’s interest in documenting Indigenous customs.