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Game of Checkers
Checkers Artist Seth Eastman
Seth Eastman from 1808 to 1875,
near Brunswick, Maine.
 Self-portraits 
Captain Seth Eastman photos
Chippewa Indians Playing Checkers
1848
- American artist painter and draughts man.
- Seth Eastman was the oldest of 13 children
and rather than attending Bowdoin College,
as his father had hoped, he had dreams
of a military career and so entered West
Point Military Academy in 1824 at the age of 16.
- Artist Seth Eastman completed his studies
in 1829 and was stationed at Fort Crawford,
Wisconsin and Fort Snelling, Minnesota,
on topographical duty until 1831.
- In 1833 Seth returned to West Point
to teach drawing until 1840; with the assistance
of Robert Walter Weir, Eastman published
the ‘Treatise
on Topographical Drawing’ at
West Point in 1837.
- In 1835, Seth Eastman married author
Mary Henderson, born in Warrenton, Virginia.
- General Eastman was elected a member
of the National Academy of Design in 1838.
- Seth was then stationed at Ft Snelling
from 1841 to 1848, where he began painting
scenes of the local Natives involved in
everyday activities.
- One such painting was Chippewa
Indians Playing Checkers in 1848,
which represented a historical genre
painting depicting a small group of Chippewa
deeply involved in a leisurely activity
of a friendly game of checkers.
- Artist Seth Eastman's painting reflected
a simple snapshot in time focusing on the
relaxing activity around the checkerboard
outside the wigwam.
- Throughout his military placements, checkers
artist Seth Eastman was amassing an incredible
portfolio of paintings and illustrations
of Native American life as he had an unquenchable
passion to preserve the posterity of the
customs of a race he believe to be dying.
- Eastman was assembling a pictorial history
of the Dakota that would become a great
legacy from the "soldier
artist of the frontier" for
generations to come by the simple depiction
of the checkers activity stating that the
Dakota people were not a lot different
from the rest of society as they enjoyed
every day pleasures as well.
- Eastman’s collection truly represented
his devotion to the study of Native character
and portrayed in oil on canvass their manners
and customs and the more important fragments of their history.
- Checkers artist Seth Eastman was extremely
successful as a painter of Native cultures
as he possessed a developed natural talent
in delineation and observation that he
was able to record in his pictorial representations
throughout his time on the frontier.
- Living among the Native people’s,
Seth developed a deep respect for their
complex culture and became fluent in their
language, so much so that in short order
his realistic renderings of their every
day lives took on a life of its own.
- His depictions truly illustrated the
essence of the people by design, color
and motif within his compositions where
the Native people were playing a game of checkers.
- At the same time as his Native paintings
first began to draw the nation’s
attention, he became aware of an opportunity
to use his unique ability as illustrator
for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the
national work on the "History,
Condition and Future Prospects of the Indian
Tribes of the United States" from
1850-55, published in 1857.
- Following his illustrative commission,
artist Seth Eastman then returned to the
frontier and later, in 1863, he retired
with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel due
to a disability received from exposure
in the line of duty; on August 9, 1866,
Seth Eastman was breveted Brigadier General.
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