Death Whoop

Death Whoop is an oil on canvas painting by American artist and career Army officer Seth Eastman.

[1] It depicts a Native American warrior holding up the scalp of a white person.

It was one of a collection of 17 Eastman paintings commissioned in 1870 by the United States Congress, the House Committee on Military Affairs.

Because people found it disturbing at a time of continued American Indian Wars, the painting was twice removed from public view in the 19th century.

[2] Under an earlier commission by Congress, Eastman had painted hundreds of illustrations for Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's major six-volume study, Indian Tribes of the United States, published 1851–1857.