8 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 134 
bodies were well proportioned, and the details of headgear, ornaments, 
and body costume, and the moccasined feet were delineated with 
painstaking care. Even though the colors of the original drawing 
are not known, some attempt at color modeling is suggested on the 
face and upper body of the warrior on the right. Can there be any 
doubt that this marked change in the painting style of Four Bears in 
the direction of a much more realistic treatment of the human figure 
should be attributed to the example of the white artists George Catlin 
and Carl Bodmer, whose artistic methods Four Bears had observed 
closely over a total period of several months? 
INFLUENCE UPON THE ART STYLE OF YELLOW FEATHER 
Next to Four Bears, the most frequent Mandan Indian visitor to 
Bodmer’s studio at Fort Clark during the winter of 1833-34 was a 
young warrior named Sih-Chida, The Yellow Feather. He was the 
son of a deceased Mandan head chief. Yellow Feather proudly 
showed Maximilian the Indians’ copy of the first treaty between 
his tribe and the United States, signed by his father and General 
Atkinson in the year 1825. 
Bodmer executed a full-length portrait of Yellow Feather in De- 
cember 1833 (plate 11, fig. 2, man on the left). Almost certainly 
this young man also posed for Catlin a year and a half earlier, 
although Catlin rendered his name “Seehk-hee-da, the Mouse- 
coloured Feather.” (See pl. 11, fig. 1.) Not only are the facial 
features of the Bodmer and Catlin portraits similar but the sitter 
wears a pair of long pendants of dentalia and large trade beads which 
appear to be identical. 
Maximilian wrote, “Sih-Chida, a tall, stout young man, the son 
of a celebrated chief now dead, was an Indian who might be de- 
pended on, who became one of our best friends and visited us almost 
daily. He was very polished in his manners, and possessed more 
delicacy of feeling than most of his countrymen. He never impor- 
tuned us by asking for anything; as soon as dinner was served he 
withdrew, though he was not rich, and did not even possess a horse. 
He came almost every evening, when his favorite employment was 
drawing, for which he had some talent, though his figures were no 
better than those drawn by our children.” (Maximilian, 1906, vol. 24, 
pp. 15-16.) 
Yellow Feather spent several nights in Maximilian’s quarters, 
sleeping on the ground before the fire. On one occasion he recovered 
Maximilian’s thermometer which he found concealed under the robe | 
