American Art Collaborative

George Catlin wrote that Stone Shell, a Kiowa brave, was “another fair specimen of the warriors of this tribe,” and that he was “somewhat allied to the mysteries and arcana of the healing art, from the close company he keeps with my friend Dr. Findley, who is surgeon to the regiment, and by whom I have been employed to make a copy of my portrait of this distinguished personage.” Catlin painted Stone Shell at a Comanche village in 1834. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 43, 1841; reprint 1973