GEORGE CATLIN — EWERS 489 



back scenes in the great Comanche camp, several of which emphasized 

 the remarkable skill of those Indians in handling horses, an ability 

 which caused experienced cavalry officers on the western frontier to 

 term the Comanche "the finest horsemen in the world." (See pi. 17, 

 fig. 1. ) Had Catlin been in good health thi'oughout this trip he doubt- 

 less would have completed a larger and more varied series of scenes 

 contrasting the customs of the nomadic Comanche and Kiowa with 

 those of the semisedentary, horticultural Wichita. His 1834 paint- 

 ings then might have rivaled in historical and ethnological importance 

 his Upper Missouri series. Nevertheless, the 1834 expedition must 

 be regarded as Catlin's second most significant venture in western 

 painting. It produced the first known pictorial interpretation of 

 important Southern Plains tribes. It also furnished some of the 

 earliest views of wildlife and scenery in the Arkansas River Valley. 



In 1835 Catlin shifted the scene of his travels and artistic endeavors 

 to the forested country of the Upper Mississippi. That spring he 

 ascended the Mississippi to the Falls of St. Anthony where he painted 

 Ojibwa portraits and scenes. On the way downstream he recorded 

 landscapes, visited and painted Eastern Sioux near Fort Snelling, 

 and the Sauk and Fox of Chief Keokuk's village. 



Next summer (1836) Catlin approached the Mississippi by way 

 of the Great Lakes — by steamer from Buffalo to Green Bay, Wis. 

 Thence by canoe via river, lake, and portage he traveled to Fort 

 Winnebago, paddled down the Wisconsin to the Mississippi, up that 

 river to Saint Peter's (Minnesota) River, and ascended that stream 

 in search of the famed quarry where Indians cut the handsome, easily 

 worked red stone from which many tribes of the Great Lakes and 

 Plains fashioned their tobacco pipes. He found it in the rising 

 country of present Pipestone County, Minnesota. Catlin painted a 

 panoramic view of the quarry (pi. 19, fig. 2) and collected samples of 

 the stone. Dr. Charles Thomas Jackson, of Boston, a leading min- 

 eralogist of the time, examined the stone, pronoimced it "a new mineral 

 compound" and named it "catlinite" in honor of the man who first 

 widely publicized the quarry site and the importance of this stone to 

 Indians. 



On this 1836 field trip Catlin added portraits of Ojibwa, Winne- 

 bago, Menominee, and Sauk and Fox Indians. He also extended his 

 series of landscapes in the Upper Mississippi Valley. 



Tlie map, figure 1, graphically summarizes Catlin's travels in quest 

 of pictures among the Indians and in the West in the years 1830-1836. 

 This series of field trips provided the source materials for the great 

 majority of the oil paintings in what later became known as Catlin's 

 Indian Gallery. Not shown on this map are Catlin's earlier trips to 

 western New York or his later (1837) journey from New York to 



