GEORGE CATLIN — EWERS 497 



This aged Oglala woman explained that a delegation of Sioux Indians 

 had brought it to her from Washington some years before. It was 

 a portrait of her father, Shell Man, as a yomig man. She had care- 

 fully made a porcupine-quilled buckskin frame for the photo and 

 kept it where she could see it often because it reminded her very 

 much of her father. My field photograph of Maggie No Fat hold- 

 ing her father's picture, a reproduction of Catlin's painting of Shell 

 Man, appears on plate 9. 



INDIAN COSTUMES AND ORNAMENTS 



Jolin James Audubon, the famous artist-naturalist, saw Assiniboin 

 Indians clad in dirty garments at Fort Union in the summer of 1843, 

 and was moved to write : "When and where Mr. Catlin saw these Indi- 

 ans as he represented them, dressed in magnificent attire, with all 

 sorts of extravagant accoutrements is more than I can divine" (Audu- 

 bon, 1897, vol. 2, p. 109) . The answer is quite simple. Among the As- 

 siniboin, as among other tribes of the west, Catlin painted prominent 

 Indians attired in their finest clothes. Most of his subjects were chiefs 

 and their wives and children. They were Indians of considerable 

 wealth who owned the most elaborate suits, dresses, and ornaments to 

 be found in their tribes. 



Students of the history of costume should keep these facts in mind 

 when viewing Catlin's portraits of Indians. Catlin doubtless had good 

 reasons for painting the best families in their best clothes. It made the 

 Indians feel honored to sit for him. It appealed to their pride and 

 vanity. Had he painted these people in everyday dress they would 

 have had much less interest for the average white viewer of Catlin's 

 paintings. Indians in their drab, undecorated daily garments would 

 have appeared about as unattractive as birds of paradise in molting 

 season. 



Catlin's interest in the details of Indian costume always was second- 

 ary to his keen desire to record his sitter's facial features. In some por- 

 traits Catlin ignored the details of his sitter's costumes (see pi. 7) . In 

 others he called particular attention to some items while slighting the 

 delineation of other details. A good example is his full-length portrait 

 of Four Bears (pi. 10, fig. 1) . When we compare the shirt depicted in 

 this painting with the actual garment preserved in the collections of 

 the U. S. National Museum (pi. 10, fig. 2) we see that Catlin exag- 

 gerated both the length of the shirt and the diameter of the quilled 

 rosette in the center of the chest. He did not attempt to indicate the 

 exquisite pattern of finely woven quillwork appearing in the arm and 

 shoulder bands. This was typical of Catlin's manner of painting when 

 he was hurried, as he certainly was at the Mandan villages in 1832. I 

 do not believe he intended to mislead or deceive anyone. In fact he ex- 



