John James Audubon was a French-American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book titled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species. He is the eponym of the National Audubon Society, and his name adorns a large number of towns, neighborhoods, and streets across the United States. Dozens of scientific names first published by Audubon are still in use by the scientific community.
George Catlin was an American lawyer, painter, author, and traveler, who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the American frontier. Traveling to the American West five times during the 1830s, Catlin wrote about and painted portraits that depicted the life of the Plains Indians. His early work included engravings, drawn from nature, of sites along the route of the Erie Canal in New York State. Several of his renderings were published in one of the first printed books to use lithography, Cadwallader D. Colden's Memoir, Prepared at the Request of a Committee of the Common Council of the City of New York, and Presented to the Mayor of the City, at the Celebration of the Completion of the New York Canals, published in 1825, with early images of the City of Buffalo.
Peter Rindisbacher was a Swiss artist. He specialized in watercolors and illustrations dealing with First Nation tribes of mid-Western Canada and the United States, mostly depictions of the Anishinaabe, Cree, and Sioux, usually in group action or genre scenes. He seldom did individual portraits; however, he painted himself into a few interior tipi scenes, usually smoking a pipe. He commonly referred to the tipis as tents, such as in the title, Inside a Skin Tent.
Hayne Hudjihini or Eagle of Delight was a prominent Otoe woman from what is now Nebraska.
Chief Shaumonekusse was a leader of the Otoe Native American tribe in the early 19th century. The Otoe are a Central Plains tribe, closely related to the Ioway, Missouria, Ho-Chunk, and Winnebago.
Thomas Loraine McKenney was a United States official who served as Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1824–1830.
Fritz William Scholder V was a Native American artist, who produced paintings, monotypes, lithographs, and sculptures. Scholder was an enrolled member of the La Jolla Band of Luiseno Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Luiseños, a California Mission tribe. Scholder's most influential works were post-modern in sensibility and somewhat Pop Art in execution as he sought to deconstruct the mythos of the American Indian. A teacher at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe in the late 1960s, Scholder instructed prominent Native American students.
The Birds of America is a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing illustrations of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and London. Not all of the specimens illustrated in the work were collected by Audubon himself; some were sent to him by John Kirk Townsend, who had collected them on Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth's 1834 expedition with Thomas Nuttall.
Henry Inman was an American portrait, genre, and landscape painter.
John Mix Stanley was an artist-explorer, an American painter of landscapes, and Native American portraits and tribal life. Born in the Finger Lakes region of New York, he started painting signs and portraits as a young man. In 1842 he traveled to the American West to paint Native American life. In 1846 he exhibited a gallery of 85 of his paintings in Cincinnati and Louisville. During the Mexican–American War, he joined Colonel Stephen Watts Kearney's expedition to California and painted accounts of the campaign, as well as aspects of the Oregon Territory.
Charles Bird King was an American portrait artist, best known for his portrayals of significant Native American leaders and tribesmen. His style incorporated Dutch influences, which can be seen most prominently in his still-life and portrait paintings. Although King's artwork was appreciated by many, it has also been criticized for its inaccurate depictions of Native American culture.
Charles Banks Wilson was an American artist. Wilson was born in Springdale, Arkansas in 1918; his family eventually moved to Miami, Oklahoma, where he spent his childhood. A painter, printmaker, teacher, lecturer, historian, magazine and book illustrator, Wilson's work has been shown in over 200 exhibitions in the United States and across the globe.
Petalesharo was a Skidi Pawnee chief or brave who rescued an "Ietan" girl, that is Comanche girl, from a ritual human sacrifice around 1817 and earned publicity for his act in national newspapers. In 1821, he was one of numerous Great Plains tribal chiefs to go to Washington, D.C. as part of the O'Fallon Delegation where they met President James Monroe.
Wapello was a Native American chief of the Meskwaki tribe.
James Otto Lewis was an American engraver and painter who was noted for his portraits of Native American leaders and other figures of the American frontier. Lewis began his engraving career in Philadelphia about 1815.
Alfred A. Hoffy (1796–1872) was a mid 19th-century American lithographer and botanical illustrator who founded the first American periodical devoted solely to fruit cultivation. Born in London, he immigrated to New York City in 1830 after serving for years in the British Army and reaching the rank of major. He became a lithographer with J.T. Bowen in New York; later the partners moved to Philadelphia.
Narcissa Clark Owen was a Native American educator, memoirist, and artist of the late 19th and early 20th century. She was the daughter of Old Settler Cherokee Chief Thomas Chisholm, wife of Virginia state senator Robert L. Owen Sr. and mother of U.S. Senator Robert Latham Owen Jr. and Major William Otway Owen. Narcissa Owen is most recognized for her Memoirs written in 1907, where she narrates accounts of her life along with the stories and culture of her Cherokee relatives.
Pes-Ke-Le-Cha-Co is an oil painting by Henry Inman currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It depicts Pawnee chief Pes-Ke-Le-Cha-Co as of 1832, painted as a copy of a now destroyed set of paintings by Charles Bird King. It was painted by Inman around 1832 to 1833.
Audience Given by the Trustees of Georgia to a Delegation of Creek Indians is an oil-on-canvas group portrait created by English painter William Verelst (1704–1752). It was painted in London in 1734 or 1735. A bequest from Henry Francis du Pont, the painting is held in the permanent collection of the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. The painting depicts a Creek Yamacraw delegation, including Tomochichi, meeting with the governing body of the English Province of Georgia.
