SKETCH OF GEORGE CATLIN. 407 



could, as a matter of course, destroy life in the same way, if I 

 chose." When a movement was made to expel him from a vil- 

 lage, and a council was held about the matter, which sat for sev- 

 eral days, he got admittance to their council, and assured them, 

 he says, " that I was but a man like themselves ; that my art had 

 no medicine or mystery about it, but could be learned by any of 

 them if they would practice it as long as I had ; and that in the 

 country where I lived brave men never allowed their squaws to 

 frighten them with foolish whims and stories. They all imme- 

 diately arose, shook me by the hand, and dressed themselves for 

 their pictures. After this there was no further difficulty about 

 sitting all were ready to be painted ; the squaws were silent, 

 and my painting-room a continual resort for the chiefs and medi- 

 cine-men." But Mr. Catlin always noticed that, when a picture 

 was going on, the braves who were assisting kept passing the 

 pipe around, smoking for the success of the picture and the pres- 

 ervation of the sitter. Thin he was feasted, a doctor's rattle was 

 presented to him, and a magical wand, or doctor's staff, " strung 

 with claws of the grizzly bear, with hoofs of the antelope, with 

 ermine, with wild sage and bats' wings and perfumed with the 

 choice and savory odor of the polecat ; a dog was sacrificed and 

 hung by the legs over my wigwam, and I was therefore and 

 thereby initiated into the arcana of medicine or mystery." 



Mr. Catlin was called by the Iowa Indians CMp-pe-ho-la ; by 

 the Mandans, Te-ho-pe-nee Wash-ee, or Great Medicine White 

 Man ; and by the Sioux at Fort Pierre, Ee-clia-zoo-kali-ga-iva-kou, 

 the Medicine Painter, and also We-chash-a-iva-kou, the Painter. 

 Associating with the Indians almost constantly, and seeing their 

 best side, Mr. Catlin's sympathies were wholly enlisted for them ; 

 and we find much in his observations appreciative of their char- 

 acter and revealing an anxious interest in their future. He often 

 speaks as one who felt that a doom of extermination which they 

 did not deserve had been pronounced against them. He wrote 

 an "Indian creed" in 1868, pertinently to his being called "the 

 Indian-loving Catlin," in which he described those people as 

 having always loved him and made him welcome to the best 

 they had ; as being honest without laws, having no jails or poor- 

 houses, keeping the commandments without ever having read 

 them or heard them preached from the pulpit, having never 

 taken the name of God in vain, loving their neighbors as them- 

 selves, worshiping God without a Bible and believing that God 

 loved them also, and " I love all people who do the best they 

 can, and oh, how I love a people who don't live for the love of 

 money ! " He asserted, in his North American Indians, that the 

 Indian " is everywhere, in his native state, a highly moral and 

 religious being, endowed by his Maker with an intuitive knowl- 



