BACKWASH OF THE FRONTIER—HALLOWELL 465 
of “Altowan” who induced Alfred Jacob Miller—now one of the most 
famous of these artists, whose true accomplishments have only become 
known to the public in recent years—to accompany him west in 1887. 
Catlin is particularly important, however, not only because he was 
a pioneer, but because he was a showman. He toured eastern cities 
in the late 1830’s exhibiting his “Indian Gallery,” which has been 
called the first Wild West show. It included Indian “curios,” featur- 
ing pipes, and in exhibition halls he erected a real Crow tepee. Catlin 
appeared in person and, taking selected pictures as a point of departure, 
lectured to his audiences about Indian life. He would dress lay figures 
in Indian clothing and frequently had some Indians on hand to pan- 
tomime native activities. Although Catlin was not an anthropologist, 
his Indian Gallery did mediate to Americans a more realistic type of 
knowledge about the Plains tribes than had been available. After 
touring American cities, he took his show to England and the Con- 
tinent. In 1954, an exhibition of Catlin’s work, sponsored by the 
United States Information Agency, was again on tour in Europe, 
while in this country Bodmer’s watercolors were being exhibited. 
Even though Catlin “had been there,” he had detractors, like Audu- 
bon, who challenged the accuracy of his paintings. The same thing 
had happened to Cooper and Longfellow. The romantic tradition 
in America was strong, and the application of a purely realistic stand- 
ard of judgment was, in effect, an attack upon the tradition. Cooper 
may have idealized the Indian in some respects and erred in many 
details, but he idealized the pioneer and backwoodsman too. The In- 
dian was enveloped in the romantic tradition and what is interesting 
is how long he has remained a part of it. 
When the dime novel sprang into popularity in the 1860’s, the 
Indians of the Cooper tradition became an integral part of this litera- 
ture. In one way or another, Indians play a role in at least 45 percent 
of the 321 stories in the original dime-novel series. “Malesia, the In- 
dian Wife of the White Hunter” (1860), the first one published by 
Beadle and Adams, actually was a reprinting of a story that had been 
serialized in 1839. “The death of the dime novel, if it ever really 
occurred, was accompanied by the birth of the nickelodeon, the motion 
picture, and the radio, which simply transferred the old stories of cow- 
boys, desperadoes, and Indians to more dynamic forms.” ”? In fact, 
as soon as the silent cinema began to flicker, the Indian of the old 
romantic tradition wasin. There was a screen version of “Hiawatha” 
as early as 1909, the “Deerslayer” was shown in 1911, the “Last of 
the Mohicans” in 1920. And, until very recently, what Stanley Vestal 
called the “Hollywooden Indian” has persisted in that typically Ameri- 
can movie genre—the western. 
2 James D. Hart, “The Popular Book. A History of America’s Literary Taste,” p. 156, 
New York. 1950. 
