PolarBear
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American artist George Catlin (1796-1872) is best known for his paintings of Native Americans on the Antebellum American frontier. He began the project of recording the tribes of North America in 1830. This coincided with Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of the same year. Catlin like many other Americans felt that these tribes would ultimately vanish from the continent and so set out to record them and their way of life before they were gone. Among the tribes he visited were the Mandans of North Dakota. They lived in villages of circular wood frame and earthen lodges or when on the move used buffalo hide tipis. Among Catlin's works are portraits of individual members of the tribe, such as 2nd Chief Mah-to-toh-pa or Four Bears. Wm. Hocker's Set 411 portrays Catlin painting this portrait.