LITERARY NOTICES. 



/"i 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Annual Report of the Board of Regents 

 OF THE Smithsonian Institution, to 

 July, 1885. Part II. Washington. Pp. 

 264 + 939. 



The first portion of this volume com- 

 prises the report of the United States Na- 

 tional Museum, made by the assistant di- 

 rector, Prof. G. Brown Goode, reports of the 

 curators of the several departments, a bibli- 

 ography of the museum publications, and a 

 list of accessions to the collections. These 

 documents cover only the first half of the 

 year 1885, because the reports of the Insti- 

 tution in future are to cover the fiscal in- 

 stead of the calendar year. The more con- 

 siderable part of the volume embodies a 

 monograph, by Thomas Donaldson, on " The 

 George Catlin Indian Gallery in the United 

 States National Museum, with Memoir and 

 Statistics," which is illustrated with one 

 hundred and forty-two plates and several 

 maps and portraits. From Mr. Donaldson's 

 memoir, it appears that George Catlin was 

 born at Wilkesbarre, Pa., July 26, 1*796, 

 and died at Jersey City, N. J., December 23, 

 1872. He studied law at Litchfield, Conn., 

 and while there became noted as an amateur 

 artist. He began practice in Luzerne Coun- 

 ty, Pa., but the law soon had to give way to 

 art, and he removed to Philadelphia in 1823, 

 where he became very popular as a minia- 

 ture and portrait painter. Catlin's boyhood 

 was passed on his father's farm in the Oc- 

 quago Valley, Broome County, N. Y., and on 

 another near Hop Bottom, Pa. The Indians 

 were then being pushed further west, but 

 the locality was still rife with tales of the red 

 men and the pioneers. George's father had 

 served six years in the Revolutionary War ; 

 his grandfather on his mother's side had es- 

 caped from the " Wyoming massacre " by 

 swimming the river ; and when the Indians 

 captured Forty Fort his grandmother and 

 his mother, then a girl of seven years, were 

 among the prisoners. Thus the recollections 

 of his own family, and the stories told by 

 the Revolutionary soldiers, Indian fighters, 

 hunters, trappers, and explorers, who were 

 frequent guests at his father's house, aroused 

 in young George's mind that interest in the 

 Indians which was to become his ruling 

 passion, " The plows in my father's fields," 

 Catlin afterward wrote, " were daily turning 

 VOL, XXXIII. — 45 



up Indian skulls or Indian bones, and Indian 

 flint arrow-heads, which the laboring-men of 

 his farm, as well as those of the neighbor- 

 hood, were bringing to me, and with which 

 I was enthusiastically forming a little cabinet 

 or museum. ... I was in a position to in- 

 crease rather than to diminish the excite- 

 ment already raised in my mind relative to 

 the Indians." While practicing his art at 

 Philadelphia, he says, "my mind was con- 

 tinually reaching for some branch or enter- 

 prise of the art on which to devote a whole 

 lifetime of enthusiasm, when a delegation of 

 some ten or fifteen noble and dignified-look- 

 ing Indians from the wilds of the far West 

 suddenly arrived in the city, arrayed and 

 equipped in all of their classic beauty. . . , 

 In the midst of success (as a painter) I again 

 resolved to use my art and so much of the 

 labors of my future life as might be required 

 in rescuing from oblivion the looks and cus- 

 toms of thfe vanishing races of native man in 

 America." This resolve was carried out in 

 his " Indian Gallery," to which he untiring- 

 ly devoted himself during forty-two years. 

 From 1829 to 1838 Mr. Catlin lived amon^ 

 the Indians, traders, trappers, and hunters 

 of the West, and in this period created the 

 original " Catlin Gallery." Ilis adventures, 

 as recounted in his " Eight Years among the 

 North American Indians," are most enter- 

 taining. The medicine-men in some places 

 aroused an opposition to his painting by as- 

 serting that the operation took away part of 

 the life of the sitter. But the good-will of 

 a powerful chief generally turned the tide in 

 his favor, and the portrait-making became 

 an honor. But this introduced a new embar- 

 rassment when he proposed to paint some of 

 the women, they not being deemed worthy 

 of such distinction. After much debate this 

 also was permitted. Catlin's "Indian Gal- 

 lery " was exhibited in this country, England, 

 and France, from 1837 to 1852, During this 

 period Mr. Catlin won the esteem and friend- 

 ship of explorers, scientists, statesmen, and 

 artists, among whom were Mayne Reid, Jo- 

 seph Ilenry, Henry Clay, Benjamin Silliman, 

 von Humboldt, Bunsen, William M. Hunt, 

 Daniel Webster, William H. Seward, John 

 A. Dix, Michael Faraday, and John Murray. 

 Before going to Europe he had attached to 

 his gallery of six hundred paintings a mu- 

 seum of several thousand Indian articles, 



