

h«»;'2^^>«v , 



A Buffalo f//«.s( . — Mr. Catlin and a Sioux In:lian masked unilcr wolf skins an- approach- 

 ing a lierd of buffaloes. IVIr. Catlin is seen to bo making sketches or notes while the Imliau 

 carries the arrows. There are many paintings of hufl'aloes in the collection 



Museum because they are the work of the first great IiKhau painter. As 

 Miss Cathn truly says, "During eight yetirs spent among them, he visited 

 every known tribe in the Mississi])pi \'alley and gave espeeial attention to 

 the differences in their types, tlieir customs, their rehgious ceremonies, 

 some canvases concerning the hist ha\'ing now become \jduable records as 

 the ceremonies themselves have died out. In this manner he became uncon- 

 sciously the first American ethnologist, publishing in the following years 

 his collected letters from those then unknown regions in a work entitled 

 'Catlin's Notes Among the North American Indians' (1841), which has 

 been recognized by the Smithsonian Institution and other scientific .societies 

 as a true history of the Indian people." 



Since Catlin's day McKenna and Hall, Hodmer, Schoolcraft and Curtis 

 have followed with similar series of illustrated publications, but so far as we 

 know, the idea was original with Catlin. His famcnis two-volume book 

 passed through many editions and is still in constant demand. 



93 



