96 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



dian painter, was in St. Louis, accompanying Clark, 

 Superintendent of Indian Affairs, on his missions to 

 close treaties with the Winnebago, Shawnee, Sac, Fox, 

 and Kansas Indians. In these interviews he began the 

 series of his Indian paintings. In 1832 he painted the 

 portraits of Black Hawk, White Cloud, and their war- 

 riors, who were prisoners of the Black Hawk War at 

 Jefferson Barracks. In the same year he ascended the 

 Missouri river to Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellow- 

 stone, and returned to St. Louis in a canoe with two men, 

 steering his frail craft the whole distance of two thou- 

 sand miles with his own paddle. On this trip he visited 

 and painted ten tribes, among them the Mandans, to 

 whom he devoted more time and labor than to any other 

 Indian tribe in North America. 



Catlin's work was undertaken in a truly scientific 

 spirit, and resulted in leaving to the world the fullest and 

 most varied records in pictures and written descriptions 

 of the aboriginal tribes as they appeared before their 

 customs and ideas had been modified by contact with 

 white civilization. In the preface to his catalogue he 

 says : " Having some years since become fully convinced 

 of the rapid decline and certain extinction of the numer- 

 ous tribes of the North American Indians, and seeing 

 also the vast importance and value which a full pictorial 

 history of these interesting but dying people might be 

 to future ages — I set out alone, unaided and unadvised, 

 resolved (if my life should be spared), by the aid of my 

 brush and my pen, to rescue from oblivion so much of 

 their primitive looks and customs as the industry and 

 ardent enthusiasm of one lifetime could accomplish, and 

 set them up in a gallery unique and imperishable, for the 

 use and benefit of future ages. ' ' 



After many vicissitudes his collection was seized in 

 London for debt, but Mr. Joseph Harrison, Jr., of Phila- 

 delphia, advanced the funds necessary to release it, and 

 took the collection as security. It was stored until 1879, 

 when so much of it as had escaped the ravages of time 



