American Art Collaborative

This portrait, according to George Catlin, gives “a very pretty specimen of the dress and fashion of the women in this tribe [the Arikara]. The inner garment, which is like a slip or frock, is entire in one piece, and beautifully ornamented with embroidery and beads, with a row of elks' teeth passing across the breast, and a robe of the young buffalo's skin, tastefully and elaborately embroidered, gracefully thrown over her shoulders, and hanging down to the ground behind her.” Catlin painted fewer women than men, a fact explained by their secondary place in Indian society. As the young daughter of an Arikara chief, however, Sweet-scented Grass possessed status in the tribe and the means to dress in “a robe of the young buffalo’s skin, tastefully and elaborately embroidered” in northern Plains style. Catlin painted this portrait at an Arikara village in 1832. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 25, 1841, reprint 1973; Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979; Gurney and Heyman, eds., George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, 2002