6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 134 
from a coup-counting session in the Mandan village of Ruhptare in 
January 1834, Four Bears told his white friends “with great satis- 
faction and self-complacency, that he had enumerated all his exploits, 
and that no one had been able to surpass him.” (Maximilian, 1906, 
vol. 24, p. 58.) 
Four Bears also was a leader in Mandan ceremonies. Prince Maxi- 
milian saw him lead a dance of the Dog Society, and learned that 
he had been selected as director of the great tribal religious festival, 
the Okipa, to be held the following summer (1834). 
Four Bears’ services to the traders and to visiting whites were 
many. Mr. Kipp relied upon him to protect the trading post at Fort 
Clark from the petty thievery of Mandan women and children. Maxi- 
milian found him to be his best authority on the language and religion 
of the Arikara, a tribe the scientist had no opportunity to visit. He 
observed that Four Bears spoke Arikara “fluently” (Maximilian, 
1906, vol. 24, p. 73). 
The active, versatile Four Bears was also an artist. This hand- 
some, stout-hearted, friendly Mandan leader completely captivated 
George Catlin as did no other Indian among the more than 40 tribes 
Catlin visited. Catlin devoted a full chapter of his book to this 
warrior’s exploits and frequently referred to him elsewhere. He 
painted two portraits of Four Bears (his Mah-to-toh-pa), both of 
which are preserved in the collections of the U. S. National Museum 
(Nos. 386128 and 386131). One portrait shows Four Bears in 
mourning, bare to the waist, with scars on his breast, arms, and legs 
evidencing his past submission to the excruciating self-torture of the 
Okipa. The other (see pl. 5, fig. 1), painted in a day-long session, 
presents Four Bears at full length in his finest dress costume. Catlin 
collected this costume and displayed it for many years in his travel- 
ing exhibition. The handsomely quilled and painted shirt is pre- 
served in the U. S. National Museum (No. 386505). This shirt 
provides excellent examples of the art style Four Bears employed in 
depicting his war exploits in 1832 or earlier. On the right side of 
the shirt front he simply recorded his victims by painting their heads 
and upper bodies (pl. 6). On the back of the shirt he portrayed one 
of his coups (pl. 7). Note the very close similarity of this style to 
that of the painting on the buffalo robe collected by Lewis and Clark 
a quarter century earlier. Except for the crude representation of the 
features (two marks for eyes and one for the mouth), the rendering 
of the human figure is almost identical. It is definitely in the tradition 
of aboriginal Mandan picture writing. 
