The Algonkin stock is represented in Mr. Catlin’s gallery by portraits and groups of Sacs and Foxes, Sheyennes, Blackfeet, Chippewas and Ottawas, Crees, Menomonees, Pottawatomies, Kickapoos, Kaskaskias, Weeahs, Peorias, Piankeshaws, Mohegans, Delawares and Shawnees.
The celebrated league of the Iroquois by representatives from the following tribes looks down upon us as Oneidas, Tuscaroras and Senecas.
John Ross, a civilized and well educated chief, with four other celebrated faces, represents the Cherokee stock. The great Muskogee or Creek confederacy includes paintings of distinguished Creeks, Choktas, Seminoles, and Yuchees. Most of the last two stocks were well instructed by Protestant missionaries, previously to their transfer into the Indian Territory. It is this fact alone which explains their steady increase while so many other tribes have melted away. It was among the Dakotas, however, that Catlin’s enthusiasm first took fire and increased most fervently. In addition to the many landscape and hunting pictures, whose scenes are laid in this romantic country, you will see staring at you from these dingy frames, men and women of many Dakotan tribes, Kansas, Osages, Ponkas, Omahas, Otoes, Missourias, Iowas, Mandans, Blackfeet Sioux, Crows, Assiniboins, Winnebagos, and Sioux proper. A few Comanches, Pawnee Picts, Weecos, Pawnees and Arikarees, Flatheads and Chinuks complete the list.
Of all the tribes visited by Mr. Catlin, the Mandans awaken the most lively interest, not only by their impressive ceremonies, but because the whole tribe were extinguished by smallpox and suicide in 1837, excepting about forty who afterward fell victims to their enemies.
Look along on the wall until you find the pictures numbered 504, 505, 506 and 507. In these, by a series of tableaux, the painter presents to us the annual ceremony of initiation, called the Sun dance by the modern Dakotas, and witnessed two years ago by Miss Alice Fletcher. This ceremony continues four days and nights in succession, in commemoration of the subsiding of the flood, and also for the purpose of conducting all the young men, as they arrive at manhood, through an ordeal of voluntary torture, which when endured entitles them to the respect of the chiefs, to the privileges of going on war-parties, and of taking a wife. The floor and sides of the medicine lodge are ornamented with green willow boughs. The young men who are to do penance by torture lie along the sides of the lodge, their bodies covered with clay of different colors, their respective shields and weapons hanging over their heads. In the middle of the lodge the medicine man prays to the Great Spirit and watches the young men through their four days’ fast, preparatory to the torture. Near the medicine man lies a scalping knife, and a bunch of splints which are to be passed through the flesh of the novitiates like belaying pins. The Buffalo dance takes place several times each day outside the lodge in which the young men lie. The principal actors in this dance are eight men with the skins of buffaloes around them and a bunch of green willows on their backs. The evil spirit, Okeehedee, enters the village from the prairie, alarming the women, who cry for assistance and are relieved by the old medicine man. Okeehedee is at length disarmed of his lance, which is broken by the women, and he is driven by them in disgrace out of the village. On the fourth day of the festival the young men are subjected to the torture, which in many forms amounts essentially to this: Two gashes, parallel and near together, are cut quite through the skin, either on the breast, back or arms, looking for all the world like those on the sides of a sheep dressed for market. A wooden pin is thrust from gash to gash, under the intervening strip of skin. One end of a long and strong rawhide line is wrapped or belayed around this peg securely. Now comes the tug of war, the problem always being either to tear this peg out by breaking the strip of flesh or to see how much pain the sufferer can stand. He is hauled up to the roof of the lodge, suspended from an elastic sapling, or dragged around the camp; finally having fastened the end of the line farthest from him to a post, he tugs away with might and main until his flesh is torn loose.
Turn now away from this dreadful scene and take a look at the funny side of Indian life. Here is a fellow whose eager haste after a buffalo ends in being thrown on the monster’s back and taking a bison ride over the prairie. There the clans contend nip and tuck for mastery in the ball play. On this canvas a celebrated archer is showing how many arrows he can shoot before the first one falls. Perhaps your delicate sensibility will not enjoy the dog dance, where the Sioux braves are dancing up grotesquely and biting off pieces of a heart taken raw and bleeding from a dog. Well, here is a sham battle of Mandan boys, their school of practice every morning at sunrise, and just there a prairie-dog village. This picture, No. 337, is the celebrated Pipestone quarry on the Couteau des Prairies, 300 miles northwest of the Falls of St. Anthony, on the divide between the St. Peters and the Missouri. Here is where from time immemorial the Indians have obtained for making pipes that beautiful red steatite, which the mineralogists now call catlinite, after our hero. There are many more just as strange and interesting stories hanging about this dear old Smithsonian, and some day The Chautauquan may let you into the secret. You notice here and there that the fatal pointer has gone quite through the noble brave, and that accounts for solicitude about your cane and umbrella at the beginning. You will find them at the door, and don’t fail to reclaim them with your check.
GEORGE BANCROFT.
BY PROF. W. W. GIST.