Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat

George Catlin, born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872 · 1834-1835

“The village of the Camanchees,” George Catlin wrote, “is composed of six or eight hundred skin-covered lodges, made of poles and buffalo skins, in the manner precisely as those of the Sioux and other Missouri tribes . . . This village with its thousands of wild inmates, with horses and dogs, and wild sports and domestic occupations, presents a most curious scene; and the manners and looks of the people, a rich subject for the brush and the pen . . . In the view I have made of it, but a small portion of the village is shewn; which is as well as to shew the whole of it, inasmuch as the wigwams, as well as the customs, are the same in every part of it. In the foreground is seen the wigwam of the chief; and in various parts, crotches and poles, on which the women are drying meat, and ‘graining’ buffalo robes.” The artist sketched this image at a Comanche village in 1834. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 42, 1841; reprint 1973)