Chief Menawa

This portrait of Creek leader Menawa was painted by Charles Bird King when Menawa visited Washington, D.C., as part of a Creek political delegation in 1825. The portrait reveals that the chief had artificially deformed earlobes wrapped in sheet silver, a practice that was on the decline among younger Creek men the 1820s. Menawa's face paint highlights the head wounds he received in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814.

Print by McKenney and Hall from the Birmingham Public Library Tutwiler Collection of Southern History and Literature