GEORGE CATLIN — EWERS 495 



visited this village in 1804. Although still occupied when Catlin 

 painted it, this site was abandoned soon thereafter (Wedel, 1955, pp. 

 80-81). A third is Catlin's distant view of the grave of Sergeant 

 Floyd, sole fatality of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, atop a lonely 

 hill beside the Missouri (No. 376) . 



The Mandan Indians near whom Lewis and Clark wintered in 

 1804-5 had intrigued the explorers and the readers of their journals. 

 In Catlin's time they were still the most remarkable tribe on the Mis- 

 souri. He painted their proud leaders in their beautifully decorated 

 dress costumes, their villages, their traditional recreations and sacred 

 ceremonies — something no member of the Lewis and Clark party had 

 had the skill to do. (See pis. 8, 10, 12, 16.) Five years later an 

 epidemic of smallpox decimated the Mandan. The remnant of that 

 tribe found residence with other farming Indians on the Missouri but 

 never regained prominence among the tribes of the region. 



Less spectacular but no less historically significant are Catlin's 

 paintings executed in the Southern Plains in 1834. Eemoval of South- 

 eastern tribes to land west of the Mississippi was already underway 

 and Catlin was the first artist to portray the Creek, Cherokee, and 

 Choctaw Indian leaders in their strange new homeland. These pic- 

 tures of gun-carrying, calico-clad civilized Indians contrast sharply 

 with the wild Comanche and neighboring natives of the plains farther 

 west — Indians who had yet to sign their first treaty with the United 

 States. (Compare the portrait of Creek chief "Ben Ferryman" with 

 that of the Comanche warrior. Little Spaniard, in pi. 5.) 



CATLIN'S PORTRAITS OF INDIANS 



Catlin was at his best as a painter of portraits. His early experi- 

 ence and reputation as an artist were achieved as a painter of por- 

 traits of white men and women. His bust or half-length portraits 

 are the best of his Indian work. Catlin never was content to portray 

 generalized or idealized Indian types. He was a realist who tried 

 to produce recognizable likenesses of real people. He possessed an 

 uncommon genius for seizing upon those features of a sitter's face 

 that defined its individuality. Catlin's Indians are sympathetically 

 presented. They have a proud bearing and an expression of dignity 

 which should be famDiar to anyone who has photographed Indians 

 on western reservations. 



Catlin was less successful in his full-length portraits. He never 

 quite mastered the human body. His attempts to solve problems of 

 foreshortening sometimes led to the representation of huge hands 

 and feet thrust forward as if projected in three-dimensional motion 

 pictures. Some of his well-proportioned heads sit like peanuts upon 

 gigantic bodies. 



