Catlin’s Indian Gallery.—We must confess that, after the many failures of exhibitions analogous to this, we did not go to it prepared either to be pleased or to glean from it any novelty of information; but we were most agreeably disappointed, and can assure our readers that a more attractive exercise for the mind could not well have been devised. We may, without hesitation, describe this immense collection of portraits, landscapes, costumes, and representations of manners and customs, as embracing a view of all the North American Indian tribes (resident in the British and Mexican territories, and those of the United States) now unexterminated! Out of the entire nations swept away by whiskey, smallpox, and the aggressions of the whites, about 300,000 souls remain; and of these the numbers become every year more and more reduced, so that ultimately we may calculate with certainty that they will
“Leave not a wreck behind.”
Under this impression Mr. Catlin has done well and wisely to “devote more than eight years of his life to the accomplishment of so great a design” as that of creating their pictorial history.
Mr. Catlin states that every painting has been made from nature, and by his own hand, many of them in the intervals of paddling a canoe, or leading a packhorse through trackless wilds, at the hazard of his life; that he has visited these people in their own villages, and painted their portraits (certificated by the United States authorities) on the spot.
The room in which this exhibition takes place is on the ground-floor of the Egyptian Hall, and is 106 feet in length. In the centre is a very handsome “Crow lodge or wigwam,” brought from the foot of the Rocky Mountains. It is made of buffalo-skins garnished and painted. The pine-poles are thirty in number, and the interior will hold eighty persons. On a table near this tent are lances, calumets, tomahawks, scalping-knives, and scalps; and above, men’s and women’s dresses, bows, spears, shields, moccasins, war-clubs, drums, &c. Around are hung the numerous paintings in oil, comprising portraits, landscapes, ceremonies, games, manual occupations, hunting excursions, councils, and feasts.
The portraits are very characteristic, the men being for the most part tidy, with one or two striking exceptions, and the young women remarkably handsome. The landscapes are clearly painted, and the ceremonies are very amusing in some instances and very horrible in others. Those which please us most are the hunting and travelling sketches, and one or two of “the fury of the fight!” For instance, No. 486, “Bogard, Batiste, and I, chasing a herd of buffalo in high grass, on a Missouri bottom,” is one of the most spirited things that can be imagined; and so also is No. 471, “A Camanchee warrior lancing an Osage at full speed.”
The great merit of these oil sketches is their manifest correctness, not to a line or the mere making out of a horse’s head or some portion of dress, but to the action and the scene. Not only the portraits, but the landscapes and groups, have a certificate of identity.
We recommend to all the “Descriptive Catalogue,” which is very amusing, and is necessary to the elucidation of customs and localities. At the private view to which we were invited on Tuesday there was a very numerous assemblage of persons of distinction.
NEW COURT GAZETTE.