SKETCH OF GEORGE CATLIN. 4 o 3 



lins have been seated ever since at Newington, Kent ; and various 

 members of the family have been honorably employed in the serv- 

 ice of the kings of England and other powers. Thomas Catlin, 

 the first ancestor in the United States, with two brothers, came 

 from England or Wales some time before 1643, when he is men- 

 tioned as having been settled in Hartford, Conn. Putnam Catlin, 

 the artist's father, served in the colonial forces for six years dur- 

 ing the Revolutionary War. His mother, Polly Sutton, was the 

 daughter of an early settler of Wyoming Valley, who was en- 

 gaged in the battles with the Indians at the time of the massacres ; 

 and she was herself captured by the Indians at the surrender of 

 Forty Fort. 



Mrs. Catlin was a Methodist and a devout Christian ; while 

 the father, a practicing lawyer, was " a philosopher, professing 

 no particular creed, but keeping and teaching the command- 

 ments." In 1797 the family removed to Ona-qua-qua Valley, 

 Broome County, N. Y., traveling on horseback over an Indian 

 trail, the baby George being carried in his mother's arms. They 

 afterward removed, at different times, to Hop Bottom, Montrose, 

 and Great Bend, Pa. 



Until he was about fifteen years old the boy lived much with 

 Nature, and became an accomplished hunter and fisherman occu- 

 pations for which he had an inveterate propensity, and from 

 which his father and mother had great difficulty in turning his 

 attention to books. By virtue of his associations his mind and 

 imagination were filled with stories of Indians and Indian life. 

 His parents had vivid recollections of the terrible adventures in 

 which they had participated ; his father's generous hospitality 

 caused the place to be frequented by Revolutionary soldiers, In- 

 dian fighters, hunters, trappers, and explorers, for whose stories 

 he had an always ready ear ; even the noonday rests in the farm- 

 fields were enlivened by the relation of incidents of the early set- 

 tlement ; and the very valley where he lived had been the rendez- 

 vous of Brant and his army during the frontier war. 



His early training, which was that usual for the sons of per- 

 sons of means in the colonies, was carefully attended to by his 

 father and his mother. In 1817 and 1818 he attended the law 

 school of Reeves & Gould, at Litchfield, Conn. He continued his 

 law studies in Pennsylvania, and entered upon the practice of the 

 profession in the courts of Luzerne and the adjoining counties. 

 But during the time of his practice, from 1820 to 1823, the passion 

 for painting, in which he had already in Connecticut become 

 noted as an amateur, was getting the advantage of him, and soon 

 all his love of pleading gave way to it ; and, he says, " After hav- 

 ing covered nearly every inch of the lawyer's table (and even en- 

 croached upon the judge's bench) with penknife, pen and ink, and 



