GEORGE CATLIN. 337 



but keeping and teaching the commandments." In 1797 the 

 family removed to Ona-qua-gua Valley, Broome County, N. Y., 

 travelling on horseback over an Indian trail, the baby George 

 being carried in his mother's arms. They afterward removed, 

 at different times, to Hop Bottom, Montrose, and Great 

 Bend, Pa. 



George was the fifth of fourteen children. Until he wds 

 about fifteen years old the boy lived much with Nature, and 

 became an accomplished hunter and fisherman occupations 

 for which he had an inveterate propensity, and from which his 

 father and mother had great difficulty in turning his attention 

 to books. By virtue of his associations his mind and imagina- 

 tion were filled with stories of Indians and Indian life. His 

 parents had vivid recollections of the terrible adventures in 

 which they had participated ; his father's generous hospitality 

 caused the place to be frequented by Revolutionary soldiers, 

 Indian fighters, hunters, trappers, and explorers, for whose 

 stories he had an always ready ear ; even the noonday rests 

 in the farm fields were enlivened by the relation of incidents 

 of the early settlement ; and the very valley where he lived 

 had been the rendezvous of Brant and his army during the 

 frontier war. 



His early training, which was that usual for the sons of 

 persons of means in the colonies, was carefully attended to 

 by his father and his mother. In 1817 and 1818 he attended 

 the law school of Reeves & Gould, at Litchfield, Conn. He 

 continued his law studies in Pennsylvania, and entered upon 

 the practice of the profession in the courts of Luzerne and the 

 adjoining counties. But during the time of his practice, from 

 1820 to 1823, the passion for painting, in which he had already 

 in Connecticut become noted as an amateur, was getting the 

 advantage of him, and soon all his love of pleading gave way 

 to it; and, he says, " After having covered nearly every inch of 

 the lawyer's table (and even encroached upon the judge's 

 bench) with penknife, pen and ink, and pencil sketches of 

 judges, juries, and culprits, I very deliberately resolved to 

 convert my law library into paint pots and brushes, and to 

 pursue painting as my future and apparently more agreeable 

 profession." 



He settled in Philadelphia in 1823, and was at once ad- 

 mitted to the fraternity of artists there, which included Thomas 



