He devoted eight years, from 1832 to 1840, to his enterprise, visiting forty-eight tribes of Indians residing within British America, the United States and Mexico. Speaking of these years in after life he says: “I have seen them in their own villages, have carried my canvas and colors the whole way, and painted my portraits from life as they now stand in the gallery. Some of them have been taken while I have been paddling my canoe, or leading my pack-horse through trackless wilds, even at the hazard of my life.”
On his return to the East from this remarkable Odyssey, Mr. Catlin exhibited his sketches, together with such a collection of weapons, dress, ornaments and implements as it will never be possible to procure again, in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, to great crowds of visitors. The papers were filled with praises respecting it. The United States Gazette says: “There can be no mistake or exaggeration in pronouncing the exhibition of these views of the scenery and natural history of the western country the most important and interesting object for public attention which has ever been offered to the eastern division of the United States.”
Many of Mr. Catlin’s friends were anxious for the government or some well founded institution to buy the collection, but nothing was accomplished.
In 1840 Mr. Catlin took his pictures abroad, prospects having been held out to him of getting a handsome price for them. The Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted the packages free of duty, and the whole was set up in a room 106 feet long, in Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London.
Numerous assemblages, comprising many of the distinguished members of the fashionable and the literary world visited the entertainments and listened to the lectures of Mr. Catlin.
It is just a little to be feared that the painter added to the genius of the artist a modicum of the showman’s vanity, in support of which theory the following is quoted from the London Morning Post: “This valuable collection of portraits, landscapes, scenes from savage life, weapons, costumes, and an endless variety of illustrations of Indian life, real as well as pictorial, continues to attract crowds of spectators. We are happy to find our prediction fully borne out by fact, that the exhibition only required to be made known to the public to be fully appreciated. The most pleasing attention is paid by Mr. Catlin and his assistants to gratify the curiosity of visitors, to point out the peculiarities of the various subjects through which they wander, and to explain everything which strikes the eye and attracts the observer to inquire into its use or meaning. During our visit on Saturday the company were startled by a yell, and shortly afterward by the appearance of a stately chief of the Crow Indians stalking silently through the hall, armed to the teeth and painted to the temples, wrapped in a buffalo robe, on which all his battles were depicted, and wearing a tasteful coronet of war eagle’s quills. This personation was volunteered by a nephew of Mr. Catlin, who has seen the red man in his native wilds, and presents the most proud and picturesque similitude of the savage warrior that can be conceived. His war-whoop, his warlike appearance and dignified movements seem to impress the assemblage more strikingly with a feeling of the character of the North American Indian than all the other evidences which crowded the walls. Subsequently he appeared in another splendid costume worn by the braves of the Mandan tribe, also remarkable for its costly and magnificent head-dress, in which we see the ‘horns of power’ assume a conspicuous place. The crowds that gathered around him on each occasion were so dense that Mr. Catlin could scarcely find space to explain in full detail all the costumes; but we are glad to find he is preparing a central stage where all may enjoy a full and fair sight of ‘the Red Man,’ as he issues from his wigwam, clad in the peculiar robes and ornaments of his tribe, to fight, hunt, smoke, or join in the dances, festivals, and amusements of each nation.”
This, of course, smacks a little of Buffalo Bill, but it pleased the Europeans amazingly. Mr. Catlin gave exhibitions in Waterloo rooms, Edinburgh; in the Louvre, at Paris, where Louis Philippe gave him ample space; and in many other European cities, occupying in all about eight years. During this time he published “Manners and Customs,” etc.; “The North American Portfolio;” “Eight Years’ Travels.” In 1861 he published a little work on “The Breath of Life,” certainly the funniest serious book we have ever read. In 1862 appeared “Last Rambles Among the Indians,” etc.
As many other people have done concerning their own handiwork, Mr. Catlin overestimated the intrinsic value of his paintings and specimens, and made the mistake of thinking that everybody would surely be as enthusiastic as himself. The British government did not buy the gallery. Even the platform and Mr. Catlin’s nephew could not save the ship. In Belgium financial embarrassment overtook the painter and his works. The whole material was likely to go under the hammer, when Mr. Thomas Harrison, a wealthy Philadelphian, advanced the money and took the collection as security, with the understanding that it could be redeemed. This proving beyond Mr. Catlin’s means, all of the paintings and specimens were transferred to Philadelphia and stored until Mr. Harrison’s death, when his widow presented the entire gallery to the National Museum, together with such dresses, etc., as time and moths had spared.
Perhaps you have heard that the Washington pictures are not the originals. The facts are these: After transferring his material in Belgium to Mr. Harrison, Mr. Catlin traveled throughout North America, and even in South America, making aboriginal sketches. This second collection was exhibited for a time in the west corridor of the Smithsonian. On his death, in 1872, the pictures were packed up and stored in the Smithsonian building until 1876, when they were transferred to the Philadelphia Exposition. They are now to be seen in the permanent exhibition there.
Now for the pictures. A great American ethnologist says “Catlin is the great American Indian liar;” another, quite as eminent, says that when he showed one of these pictures to a Sioux Indian, the latter was affected to tears at the recognition of a dear friend long deceased. Both were right. Recently M. Achille Collin, a French sculptor, was employed to produce several busts of celebrated Indians, from photographs and portraits, for the New Orleans Exposition. Among them was Osceola, whose portrait is in the Catlin gallery. Fortunately, the Museum has also Osceola’s death mask. M. Collin found that Catlin had placed the eyes too far apart, and had perpetrated several other little artistic outrages, yet the sculptor was able to rectify these and to produce a wonderful bust of the wily Seminole. In one sense everything is wrong in these paintings, in another sense they are teeming with life and spirit. A French critic said in the Paris Constitutionnel: “A professional painter is perfectly lost in the presence of a nature new to him, in such singular lands, such original colors of sky, foliage and men.” You must know a language in order to appreciate its beauties, you must know Indian life to appreciate Catlin. His images do not pose, they fly across the canvas. M. Schindler, whose lifelike portraiture of fishes has given him a world-wide reputation, and who has lived among the Sioux and painted them, has the same admiration of these savage portraitures, whose shadowy looks are ominous of their fast fading originals. A workman in the Museum whose business it is to arrange Indian costumes says that in those things which anybody can do, Catlin was careless; but in the arrangement of dress, ornaments and weapons, which nobody now knows how to fix, he is an invaluable guide. It may not be known to all that the numberless tribes formerly living within our domain belonged to a few well defined stocks, recognizable by language, institutions, and customs. East of the Rocky Mountains, where most of these pictures were painted, were the Athapascan of the north, the Algonquin and Iroquois of the east, the Cherokee and Muskokee of the south, and the Dakotan of the west. In the great interior basin were the Shoshones, and west of the Sierras the Flatheads, Chinuks, and many other little known stocks.