206 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



■who concern themselves about the affairs of the neglected aborigines, while the 

 remainder of his time had been actively employed among his own people. So far as 

 we can judge of his character by his acts, we believe him to be an able man, who has 

 done good service for his people. — McKenney & Hall, vol. 3, page 176. 



Mr. Eoss was born in Georgia, about 1790, and died at Washing- 

 ton City, August 1, 1866. He was a man of pronounced and marked 

 executive ability, and was the leader of the "Eoss party," amongst the 

 Cherokees. 



This picture is not in the cartoon collection. 



284. Tuch-ee, called " Dutch," first war chief of the Cherokees ; a fine looking 

 fellow with a turbaned head. Painted in 1836. 

 (See Plate No. 218, pages 121, 122, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years.) 



Of this picture and person Mr. Catlin writes : 



Besides the Cherokees in Georgia, and those that I have spoken of in the neighbor- 

 hood of Fort Gibson, there is another band or family of the same tribe, of several 

 hundreds, living on the banks of the Canadian River, a hundred or more miles south- 

 west of Fort Gibson, under the government of a distinguished chief by the name of 

 Tuch-ee, familiarly called by the white people " Dutch." This is one of the most ex- 

 traordinary men that lives on the frontiers at the present day, both for his remark- 

 able history and for his fine and manly figure and character of face. 



This man was in the employment of the Government as a guide and hunter for a 

 regiment of dragoons, on their expedition to the Camanchees, where I had him for a 

 constant companion for several months, and opportunities in abundance for studying 

 his true character and of witnessing his wonderful exploits in the different varieties 

 of the chase. The history of this man's life has been very curious and surprising ; 

 and I sincerely hope that some one, with more leisure and more talent than myself, 

 will take it up and do it justice. I promise that the life of this man furnishes the 

 best materials for a popular tale that are now to be procured on the western 

 frontier. 



He is familiarly known, and much of his life, to all the officers who have been 

 stationed at Fort Gibson or at any of the posts in that region of the country. 



Some twenty years or more since, becoming fatigued and incensed with civilized 

 encroachments that were continually making on the borders of the Cherokee country 

 in Georgia, where he then resided, and probably foreseeing the disastrous results 

 they were to lead to, he beat up for volunteers to emigrate to the West, where he 

 had designed to go and colonize in a wild country beyond the reach and contami- 

 nation of civilized innovations, and succeeded in getting several hundred men, 

 women, and children, whom he led over the banks of the Mississippi, and settled upon 

 the headwaters of the White River, where they lived until the appearance of white 

 faces, which began to peep through the forests at them, when they made another move 

 of six hundred miles, to the banks of the Canadian, where they now reside, and where 

 by the system of desperate warfare which he has carried on against the Osagesand the 

 Camanchees, he has successfully cleared away from a large tract of fine country all 

 the enemies that could contend for it, and now holds it, with his little band of myr- 

 mydions, as their own undisputed soil, where they are living comfortably by raising 

 from the soil fine crops of corn and potatoes and other necessaries of life ; whilst 

 they indulge, whenever they please, in the pleasun^s of the chase amongst the herds 

 of buffaloes, or in the natural propensity for ornamenting their dresses and their war 

 clubs with the scalp lock of their enemies. — G. C. 



In the Cartoon Catalogue, page 23, cartoon No. 71 h, this picture is 

 noted as '■'■ Tucli-ee (called Dutch), chief of a band, one of the most 

 celebrated of the frontier Indians of the United States." 



