Pachtuwa-Chta, Arikara Warrior Portrait by Bodmer Postcard

Pachtuwa-Chta, Arikara Warrior (c.1840-1843) by Karl Bodmer is a vintage American West fine art portrait painting. Pachtuwa-Chta, a Native American Indian Arikara Warrior. Arikara (also Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree) are a group of Native Americans who speak the Arikara language. Due to their reduced numbers, the Arikara started to live closer to the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes, who lived in the same area. Pachtuwa-Chta was introduced to Prince Maximilian and Karl Bodmer by Mato-Tope, one of the chiefs of the Mandan tribe in 1834. He posed for Bodmer wearing a beautiful red buffalo robe and heavily beaded leggings and moccasins, and carried in the crook of his arm a gunstock type war club. About the artist: Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) was a Swiss painter of the American Wild West. He accompanied German explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied from 1832 through 1834 on his Missouri River expedition. Bodmer was hired as an artist with the specific intent of travelling through the American West and recording images of the different tribes they saw along the way.