Historical context

Keokuk's image, first widely circulated via Charles Bird King and George Catlin portraits, was already 70+ years into public reproduction by the time it reached a tobacco silk — a compressed lineage from federal peace-medal portraiture to cigarette packaging.

Curatorial notes

Reads in sequence with the Red Cloud silk: two named nineteenth-century leaders re-issued as early-twentieth-century advertising surface.

Interpretive themes

• — Advertising & Race
• — Colonial Portraiture
• — Historical Figures as Product

Related artifacts

• — ARE-EPH-SILK-004