382 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



pecially interesting in its resemblance to some of tlie self-iuflictcd tortures of tlio 

 devotees of Eastern superstitions. 



In regard to the remarlis relative to Mr, Schoolcraft, it is but justice to state that wo 

 were intimately acquainted with him, and cannot for a moment harbor the thought 

 that he would have done anything to disparage the veracity of any one froni any other 

 motive than a desire to i)romot6 the truth. The statements of Mr. Catlin were at the 

 time so remarkable, the ceremonies which he described beiug so unlike those of other 

 Indian tribes, that Mr. Schoolcraft was justifiable in receiving tlie account with doubt, 

 although he may have expressed his disbelief in stronger terms than he would have 

 done had he been more intimately acquainted with the character of Mr. Catlin than 

 he appears to have been. 



Bakhy, Clay County, Missouki, August 12, 1872. 

 Dear Sir: Though a stranger to you, I take the liberty of addressing you this 

 note as important to science and to the ethnology of our country, as Avell as imjiortant 

 to the reputation of one who has devoted much of a long and hazardous life in por- 

 traying and perpetuating the customs of the dying races of man in America. Mr. 

 Schoolcraft sent me, some years past, a copy of a large work lie had i:)ublished for the 

 Government of the United States on the North American Indians, and of which work 

 some thousands of copies were presented by the Government to the libraries of the 



supplies in the Lower Missouri country, Captain Kipp, in 1838, settled in Platte County, Missouri. 

 He bought a farm there in July, 1344. On this farm his wife, a Prench lady, Uved. 



Captain Kipp, in the June rise of the Missouri, would each year float his bateaux, laden with furs 

 and pelts, from the upper country to Saint Louis for a market. Often his fleet would consist of 

 twenty, thirty, or sometimes more boats, with an average load of ten tons each. He would return to 

 his farm in the faU and prepare for a spring journey to the Indians. Ponies would be purchased, and 

 outfits for packing be prepared for packing goods and supplies for trade with the Indians from the 

 steamboat landings on the Upper Missouri to the Indian villages (now Forts Pierre and tTuion). There 

 the supplies were traded to the Indians for furs and a return pack for the animals procured. The 

 pfelts were then packed to the steamboats and shipped to the Platte County farm, where they were 

 placed in boats and taken to Saint Louis. 



He retired fiom the Indian trade about 1865 and became a farmer. 



In 1876 he visited the Upper Missouri and his old friends the Mandans. He spent the summer and 

 autumn of 1876 at the Mandan village and Fort Benton (where he now has a son residing, his only sur- 

 viving child). He was greeted warmly by the Mandans, who had long mourned for him as dead. He 

 said: "The old men and women fell upon my neck, kissed me, and wept." One Indian woman, who 

 had known him for years, made him a bead tobacco-pouch as a present. 



Captain Kipp returned to Clay County, Missouri, in the fall of 1876, and remained there until his 

 death. 



He was a lover of horses, and a constant votary of horseback riding. Six weeks before his demise, 

 at the age of ninety-two, he mounted a horse and rode about over the country with the ease and com- 

 fort of a young man. There was much of the step and make-up of the Indian in his frame and walk. 



He contended until his death that the American Fur Company were indebted to him $25,000. 



Captain Kipp was an educated man, and kept a diary for forty years of his life amongst the Indians. 

 He collected an immense museum of curious Indian things, and had them in his house in Platte County, 

 Missouri. They, with the diary, were all destroyed by fire along with the house before his death, 

 about 1870. 



Mr. Catlin was dead before this letter was published. 



Mr. Dan Carpenter, postmaster at Barry, Mo., an old friend of Captain Kipp, gives the main inci- 

 dents of his life used herein, and writes September 1, 1885 : * 



"I have often heard Captain Kipp speak of George Catlia, the Indian painter, with feehngs of the 

 warmest affection and sympathy. It was before me, at Barry, as a notary public, in 1872, that he made 

 affidavit to the correctness and genuineness of four of Catlin's oil paintings of scenes in the 'Annual 

 Mandan religious ceremonies.' These paintings were sent to Barry, Mo., by the Interior Department, 

 I think, or perhaps by the Smithsonian Institution. Mr. Catlin was at that time trying to sell his 

 pictures to the Government. He made affidavit before me as to the correctness of the pictures in rep- 

 resenting some of the most revolting barbarities practiced on the young men who desired to be braves. 

 Captain Kipp made afiidavit that these pictures were shown to him at the time (viz, in 1S82) by Mr. 

 Catlin, at the Mandan village, where they were painted. He stated that he had witnessed these cere- 

 monies two or three times, and that these paintings repre^nted them truly. jThe four pictures were 

 about 18x24 inches .eacli.(viz:iN'o3.i504, 505,i506/nand_507)." 



