Mak-phe-ah-luta (Red Cloud)

Mak-phe-ah-luta, known in English as Red Cloud, was one of the most consequential Native American leaders of the nineteenth century. The Oglala Lakota chief had defeated the United States Army in Red Cloud's War of 1866-1868, forcing one of the few treaty victories for Native Americans in the post-Civil War period. By 1887, when Shindler painted this portrait, Red Cloud was in his mid-sixties and presiding over a people facing unprecedented pressure on the Pine Ridge Reservation. This portrait is an important historical document of one of America's most significant military and political figures.

Shindler renders Red Cloud with the consistent frontal clarity of his Smithsonian series, but the subject's commanding presence — even in old age — gives this portrait particular gravity. The face is carefully observed, showing the lines of age and experience.