Ta-wa-que-nah, or the Rocky Mountain, Near the Comanche Village

“Our Camanchee guides . . . pointed to their village at several miles distance, in the midst of one of the most enchanting valleys that human eyes ever looked upon . . . with a magnificent range of mountains rising in distance beyond . . . composed entirely of a reddish granite of gneiss.” This painting is the most topographically accurate landscape of the Southern Great Plains series, and has a composition that is reminiscent of early Hudson River school paintings. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 41, 1841, reprint 1973; Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)