Mo-Hon-Go Osage Woman

Mo-Hon-Go Osage Woman

Engraved by Lehman and Duval, after Charles Bird King Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1834
Lithograph
74.212
Friends of the Museum Purchase

Since the 16th century, Europeans have depicted Native Americans in a traditional European manner. In the 19th century, the War Department commissioned portraits of Native American delegations to Washington. Painted by Charles Bird King, these subjects were posed in ways that were familiar to Bird and his white audience. Interest in these paintings was so high that the original paintings were reproduced as prints for mass consumption.