496 ANlJfUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



Indian portraits comprise more than half of the paintings in the 

 George Catlin Collection in the U. S. National Museum. Some of 

 these Indians were men famous in American history — such men as 

 Black Hawk (pi. 3, fig. 1), The Open Door, brother of Tecumseh 

 (pi. 3, fig. 2), and Osceola (pi. 6). Others played roles of some 

 importance in regional or local history. Many were men of prom- 

 inence in their tribes who have received little recognition in written 

 history. They lived far beyond the frontiers of white settlement 

 decades before their descendants gained fame fighting wars or mak- 

 ing treaties with white men. Yet such men as the Mandan Four 

 Bears (pi. 8, fig. 1; pi. 10, fig. 1), Bull's Back Fat, Blood (pi. 20), 

 The Light, Assiniboin (pi. 11, fig. 2), and Horse Chief, Pawnee (pi. 

 2, fig. 2) are remembered in the oral literature of their tribes as 

 powerful leaders. 



Probably the most appreciative viewers of Catlin's Indian por- 

 traits have been members of the tribes whose early chiefs he depicted. 

 Less than 40 years after Catlin painted Indians on the Upper Mis- 

 souri, Dr. Washington Mathews showed the small line illustrations 

 in Catlin's 2- volume book to Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Indians 

 near Fort Buford. Some of these people were children and grand- 

 children of persons portrayed in Catlin's pictures. Dr. Mathews 

 was impressed by their ability to recognize and identify the portraits 

 of their forebears. All those who remembered the old chief, Black 

 Moccasin (pi. 4), pronounced that portrait "a wonderful likeness." 

 Bushing Eagle, son of Four Bears, the Mandan chief twice painted 

 by Catlin in 1832, was still living. Old men of the tribe considered 

 him "the image of his father." Mathews pointed out the close simi- 

 larity in features between Catlin's profile of Four Bears and a pro- 

 file photograph of Eushing Eagle (Mathews, 1888, entire; 1891, 

 pp. 602-604). On plate 8 I have juxtaposed Catlin's previously 

 unpublished three-quarter view of Four Bears and a photograph 

 of Rushing Eagle taken in 1874. The similarity between the two in 

 this more difficult pose is very striking. 



Members of Indian delegations from western tribes to Washington 

 have shown a lively interest in Catlin portraits of their tribal leaders 

 of more than a century ago. These pictures serve to substantiate and 

 complement their own oral traditions of great leaders in their grand- 

 fathers' or great-grandfathers' generations. 



I have taken selected photographs of Catlin's portraits into the 

 field to show elderly Indians as an aid to obtaining biographical 

 information and data on the history of Indian costume and crafts. 

 In 1947, I was surprised to find hanging on the wall of Maggie No 

 Fat's log cabin on Pine Ridge Reservation a faded photographic 

 print of one of Catlin's oil portraits in the U. S. National Museum. 



