494 ANNUAL REPORT SMTTIISONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



under them show through. Catlm quickly roughed in the figures in 

 brown outline. If he had time he filled in the outlines. Catlin's field 

 portraits were started in this same technique of rapid outlining in 

 brown. Sometimes he never bothered to develop any part of the 

 painting but the head. (See pis. 2 and 7.) At other times he added 

 or refined details after his return to civilization. An article in the 

 Pittsburgh Gazette of April 23, 1833, the spring following his busy 

 summer on the Upper Missouri, refers to his practice of touching up 

 his fieldwork in the studio : 



The total number (of paintings) which he commenced during his expedition 

 is very large, most of them are yet in an unfinished state, he only having had 

 sufficient leisure to secure correct likenesses of the various living subjects of 

 his pencil and the general features of the scenery which he had selected, the 

 backgrounds and details being reserved for the labours of a future time. 



Probably Catlin paid much more attention to his portraits in the 

 studio — adding backgrounds and finishing touches — than to his scenes 

 in Indian life. He was content to let some of his oil paintings of 

 Indian activities remain as rough suggestions, little more refined than 

 the crude pictographs drawn by Indians themselves. Years later 

 (in the 1850's) he redrew some of these subjects in greater detail in 

 pencil retaining the basic composition but sharpening the individual 

 figures. Compare Catlin's painting of Sioux moving camp (1832) 

 with his pencil rendering of the same subject 20 years later (pi. 13). 



UNUSUAL HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CATLIN'S WORKS 



As historical documents George Catlin's paintings offer a broad 

 panorama of the Wild West as it appeared a century and a quarter 

 ago. Indians were then as independent as their aboriginal ancestors 

 had been when they met the first white explorers. The Great Plains 

 were still Indian country. The few white men who entered it were 

 mostly traders and trappers. Cowboys, prospectors, land surveyors, 

 and homesteaders were unknown there in the 1830's. The buffalo 

 was the Indians' staff of life. The bitter Plains Indian Wars that 

 followed settlers' disturbances of native hunting grounds were yet far 

 away. Indeed Catlin traveled almost alone through the country of 

 the warlike Sioux before either Sitting Bull or Custer were born. 



Catlin journeyed up the Missouri 28 years after Lewis and Clark 

 ascended that river on their trek to the Pacific. The country and its 

 native cultures had changed little in the intervening years. Three 

 of Catlin's works are especially reminiscent of the Lewis and Clark 

 Expedition. One is a portrait of the aged Hidatsa chief Black Moc- 

 casin (pi. 4), who was a virile leader well known to Lewis and Clark. 

 Another is a panoramic view of the double village of the Arikara (pi. 

 12, fig. 1) , 4 miles above the mouth of Grand River. Lewis and Clark 



