I devoted eight years of my life exclusively to the accomplishment of my design, and that with more than expected success.
I visited with great difficulty, and some hazard to life, forty-eight tribes (residing within the United States, British, and Mexican Territories), containing about half a million of souls. I have seen them in their own villages, have carried my canvas and colours the whole way, and painted my portraits, &c., from the life, as they now stand and are seen in the Gallery.
The collection contains (besides an immense number of costumes and other manufactures) near six hundred paintings, 350 of which are Portraits of distinguished men and women of the different tribes, and 250 other Paintings, descriptive of Indian Countries, their Villages, Games, and Customs; containing in all above 3000 figures.
As this immense collection has been gathered, and every painting has been made from nature, by my own hand—and that too when I have been paddling my canoe, or leading my pack-horse over and through trackless wilds, at the hazard of my life—the world will surely be kind and indulgent enough to receive and estimate them, as they have been intended, as true and fac-simile traces of individual life and historical facts, and forgive me for their present unfinished and unstudied condition as works of art.
Geo. Catlin.
INDIAN PORTRAITS.
CERTIFICATES.
