58 REVIEWS — THE GREAT DESERTS OP NORTH AMERICA. 



American artist during his residence at the United States Fort, near 

 the junction of the Yellow Stone with the Missouri. 



Unacknowledged appropriations are carried on throughout in the 

 same free wholesale fashion. But the sense of deception practised 

 on the reader, is fully developed when on comparing the Abbe's 

 illustration of an Osage Indian, with Catlin's portrait of Tchong-tas- 

 sab-bee, or the Black Dog of the Osages, from which it is unmistake- 

 ably borrowed, not only do we find the characteristic Indian features 

 lost in the surreptitious copy ; but a ridiculous tatooing of two 

 crossed hatchets on the cheek, with sundry other figures on breast 

 and arms, are introduced, not only without authority from Catlin's 

 original, but with as much propriety as an Indian brave's war-paint 

 and scalp-locks would present, if added to the portraiture of General 

 Beauregard, or President Lincoln. The like theatrical additions are 

 introduced on the " Chinook woman," (p. 16, vol. I.) a Flathead 

 Indian, copied, or rather made up, from an inaccurate design, in 

 which Catlin has blunderingly represented the head of the cradle- 

 board, intended to protect the infant from injury, as the instrument 

 employed in flattening its forehead. The truth is, that the original 

 artist, Mr. George Catlin, was drawing on his imagination when he 

 undertook to delineate a Flathead of the Pacific, as he honest- 

 ly confesses. The latter's description of this flight of fancy begins as 

 follows : " Whilst I am thus taking a hasty glance of the tribes on 

 the Atlantic coast, on the borders of Mexico, and the confines of 

 Canada, the reader will pardon me for taking him a few minutes to the 

 mouth of the Columbia on the Pacific coast, which place I have not 

 yet quite reached myself" One of the best proofs of Catlin's 

 general accuracy is the difference between this slovenly fancy sketch 

 and his specimens of genuine Indian portraiture. No one who studies 

 M. Domenech's meagre and inacci.rate notice of the Flathead Indians 

 of the Columbia River, will doubt that he would have done well if he 

 had imitated the candour of Catlin. Instead of this, however, the 

 learned Parisian ethnologist treats us and his brother savans to an 

 illustration manufactured by M. Joliet, — or whoever is responsible 

 for the Abbe's pictorial ethnology, — out of the imperfect fancy sketch 

 invented by the American painter. 



It is scarcely necessary to follow out our process of comparison 

 further in this department. The whole is made up after the same 

 fashion. The " Chippeway," (vol. ii. p. 18,) is Catlin's Ka-be-mub- 



