THE UNITED STATES GAZETTE.
Mr. Catlin’s Views of the Far West.—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.
It has been with a fascinating degree of feeling and adventure that Mr. Catlin has gone over the immense plains of the west, and employed himself with pallet and pencil among all the scenes he could select of landscape and natural history, and with the western natives, and to sketch people, views, and objects which have formed so much of its distinctive character, by which he may rescue and retain the almost incredible appearances and habits of a race of men and animals now fast disappearing in the march of civilization, upon the remembrance and record of history.
The collection of Portraits, made of upwards of 300 persons, forms a representation from forty-eight Indian nations, chiefly between the settled part of our country and the Rocky Mountains, among which are the Sacs, Osage, Pawnee, Camanchee, Sioux, Mandans, Blackfeet, Shawnee, Cher-o-kee, Seneca, and Seminoles; and of these, the portraits of Osceola, Micanopeah, Keokuk, Black Hawk, Io-way, Red Jacket, Co-ee-ha-jo, King Philip, John Ross, with several of their wives and children, will always be prominent in the references of American history.
In addition to these important objects of personal consideration, the peculiar and correct representations and appearances of the general western country are prominent, and are all of a highly novel and beautiful character.
The views of rivers, towns, settlements, mountains, prairies, and waterfalls, and animals, are generally those which have never been before presented to us. They have been taken in upwards of 200 oil paintings coloured to nature, and consist of the most important localities reaching to the Rocky Mountains, finished on the spot with a fidelity of delineation and picturesque effect which would be creditable to an artist of very high attainments with all the “appliances and means” afforded by the best accommodation and leisure.
THE PHILADELPHIA SATURDAY COURIER.
Catlin’s Indian Gallery.—In a late number we took notice of the vast and wonderful assemblage of pictures and curiosities by which Mr. Catlin has contrived to bring before our eyes the fullness of the life of the Western Indians. We would again urge upon our citizens, as Americans, and as valuing curious information and refined pleasure, to give this gallery a visit. There is not in our land, nor in any part of Europe which we have visited, anything of the kind more extraordinary or more interesting. The galleries illustrative of national character and antiquities which are to be found in London, Paris, Florence, and other cities, have been collected by the power of great kings; and the outlay of immense treasure, and the apparatus of negotiations, and special ministers, and resident consuls, and agents innumerable, have been requisite to their completion. This is the work of a single individual, a man without fortune and without patronage, who created it with his own mind and hand, without aid and even against countenance; and who sustained the lonely toils of eight years in a region fearful and forbidding beyond the conceptions of civilized life, in order to present his countrymen with a work which he knew they would one day value as the most remarkable thing they owned, and which he was assured that no spirit and no skill but his own could accomplish. He may point to his magnificent collection, which now receives the admiration of every eye, and may say with honest pride, “Alone I did it!” But without the abatement of a reference to the circumstances of the case and without any qualification of any sort, we declare that if this museum is less gorgeous and less stately than those imperial galleries which give fame even to the capitals of England and France, it is not less instructive or entertaining than the greatest of them. Of the enterprise, the free genius, the noble self-dependence, the stern endurance, and indomitable perseverance which our republican system glories in inspiring and cherishing, there is no nobler, and there will be no more abiding monument, than Catlin’s Indian Gallery.