''Death Whoop'' is an

oil on canvas Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...

painting by American artist and career Army officer

Seth Eastman Seth Eastman (January 24, 1808– August 31, 1875) was an artist and West Point graduate who served in the U.S. Army, first as a mapmaker and illustrator. He had two tours at Fort Snelling, Minnesota Territory; during the second, extended tour ...

.''Death Whoop''
image at University of Virginia website It depicts a

Native American Native Americans or Native American usually refers to Native Americans in the United States. Related terms and peoples include: Ethnic groups * Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the pre-Columbian peoples of North, South, and Central America ...

warrior holding up the

scalp The scalp is the area of the head where head hair grows. It is made up of skin, layers of connective and fibrous tissues, and the membrane of the skull. Anatomically, the scalp is part of the epicranium, a collection of structures covering th ...

of a white person. It was one of a collection of 17 Eastman paintings commissioned in 1870 by the United States Congress, the House Committee on Military Affairs. These were hung in the committee room and halls. Because people found it disturbing at a time of continued

American Indian Wars The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, was a conflict initially fought by European colonization of the Americas, European colonial empires, the United States, and briefly the Confederate States o ...

, the painting was twice removed from public view in the 19th century. It was reinstalled in the Capitol in the 1930s.Patricia Condon Johnston, "Seth Eastman: The Soldier Artist"
PBS, accessed 11 December 2008 Under an earlier commission by Congress, Eastman had painted hundreds of illustrations for

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi R ...

's major six-volume study, '' Indian Tribes of the United States'', published 1851–1857. Eastman's many paintings and drawings of the Dakota and Ojibwe done during tours at

Fort Snelling Fort Snelling is a former military fortification and National Historic Landmark in the U.S. state of Minnesota on the bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. The military site was initially named Fort Saint An ...

in the early 1830s and several years in the 1840s comprise an important state resource of Dakota culture.

References

1870s paintings American paintings Native American-related controversies Race-related controversies in painting {{1870s-painting-stub