MANDAN CEREMONIES. 437 



In regard to the remarks relative to Mr. Scboolcraft, it is but Justice to 

 state that we were intimately acquaiuted with him, and cannot for a mo- 

 ment harbor the thought that he would have done anything to disparage 

 the veracity of any one from any other motive than a desire to promote 

 the truth. The statements of Mr. Catlin were at the time so remarkable, 

 the ceremonies which he described being so unlike those of other Indian 

 tribes, that 3Ir. Schoolcraft was justifiable in receiving the account with 

 doubt, although he may have expressed his disbelief in stronger terms 

 than he would h.ive done had he been more intimately acquainted with 

 the character of Mr. Catlin than he appears to have been. — [J. H.] 



Barry, Clay Gonniy, Mo., Aiif/unf 12, 1872. 



Dear Sir: Though a stranger to yoa, I take the liberty of addressing 

 you this note as important to science and to the ethnology of our coun- 

 try, as well as important to the reputation of one who has devoted much 

 of a long and hazardous life in portraying and perpetuating the customs 

 of the dying races of man in America. Mr. Schoolcraft sent me, some 

 years past, a copy of a large work he had published for the Government 

 of the United States on the North American Indians, and of which 

 work some thousands of copies were presented by the Government to 

 the libraries of the institutions of the New and the Old World. In this 

 work 1 find that Mr. SchoolcTaft denies the truth of Mr. Catlin's descrip- 

 tion of the Mandan religious ceremonies — the truth of his assertion that 

 the Mandan youths suspended the weight of their bodies by S[)lints run 

 through the flesh on the breast and shoulders, &c. ; and asserts, also, 

 that his whole account of the Mandan religion is all wrong. It is a 

 great pity that Mr. Schoolcraft, who never visited the Mandans, should 

 have put forth such false and unfounded assertions as these on a subject 

 so im[)()rfant to science, and so well established by proved facts. 



I had the sole control of the American Fur Company's business with 

 the Mandans, and lived in their village, for the space of thirteen years, 

 from 1822 to 1835, and was doubtless the first white man who ever 

 learned to speak their language. In the summer of 1832 Mr. George 

 Catlin was a guest in my fort at the Mandan village, observing and 

 learning the customs of those interesting and ])eculiar people, and paint- 

 ing the portraits of their celebrated men, of which he made nmny and 

 with great exactness. It was during that summer that Mr. Catlin wit- 

 nessed the Mandan religious ceremonies, the O-kee-pa described in his 

 notes of travels among the North American Indians, and to which ^Ir. 

 Schoolcraft has applied the insulting epithet of falsity in his great work. 

 By the certificate published bj' Mr. Catlin, signed by my chief clerk and 

 myself, on the 28th day of July, 1832, in the Mandan village, certifying 

 that we witnessed, in company with Mr. Catlin, the whole of those four 

 days' ceremonies, and that he has represented in his four paintings, 

 then and there made of them, exactly what we saw, and without addi- 

 tion or exaggeration, it will be seen that I witnessed those scenes with 



