Seth Eastman

Seth Eastman was a soldier and painter who recorded Native American life on the Upper Mississippi with careful, documentary accuracy: games, camps, travel and ceremonies of the Dakota and Ojibwe people.

He was born in Brunswick, Maine, in 1808, graduated from West Point and learned topographical drawing as part of his training. Posted to Fort Snelling in Minnesota, he painted the Dakota people around him. He illustrated Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s six volume study of Native American tribes and later painted scenes of Indian life and a series of American forts for the US Capitol, where several still hang. He died in Washington in 1875.

Ballplay of the Sioux on the St. Peters River in Winter shows his eye for detail and landscape.