THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 429 



Missouri, thirteen hundred miles above Saint Louis, and now in Ne. 

 braska. 



Writing from Laidlaw's Fort (old Fort Pierre), at the mouth of the 

 Teton Eiver, and near its junction with the Missouri, he says: 



Taking it for granted tlion, that I will be indulged in this freak, I am taking the lib- 

 ertj' of presuming on my readers' patience in proposing another, which is to otfer them 

 here an extract irom my notes, which were made on my journey thirteen hundred luiles 

 from Saint Louis to this place, where I stopped, as I have said, amongst several thou- 

 sands of Sionx ; where I remained for some time, and painted my numerous portraits 

 of their chiefs, &c. ; one of whom was the head and leader of the Sioux, whom I have 

 already introduced. On the long and tedious route that lies between Saint Lonia 

 and this place, I passed the Sacs and loways — the Konzas — the Omahaws, and the Ot- 

 toes (making notes on them all, which are reserved for another place). 



The portraits of the Poncas, with descriptive notes, on IsTos. 95, 96, 

 97, and 98 herein. When leaving the Ponca village Mr. Catlin ob- 

 served the following: 



AN OLD PONCA INDIAN LEFT BY HIS PEOPLE TO DIE. 



[Letter from the month of Teton Kiver, Upper Missouri.] 



When we Avere about to start on our way up the river from the village of the Pun- 

 cahs, we found that they were packing up all their goods and preparing to start for 

 the prairies, farther to the west, in pursuit of buli'aloes, to dry meat for their winter's 

 supplies. They took down their wigwams of skins to carry with them, and all were 

 flat to the ground and everything packing up ready for the start. My attention was 

 directed by Major Sanford, the Indian agent, to one of the most miserable and helpless 

 looking objects that I ever had seen lu my life — a very aged and emaciated man of the 

 tribe, who, he told me, was to be exposed. 



The tribe were going where hunger and dire necessity compelled them to go, and 

 this pitiable object, who had once been a chief, and a man of distinction in his tribe, 

 who was now too old to travel, being reduced to mere skin and bones, was to be left 

 to starve, or meet with such death as might fall to his lot, and his bones to be picked 

 by the wolves! I lingered around this poor old forsaken patriarch for hours before 

 we started, to indulge the tears of sympathy which were flowing for the sake of this 

 poor benighted and decrepit old man, whose worn-out limbs were no longer able to 

 support him, their kind and faithful offices having long since been performed, and 

 his body and his mind doomed to linger into the withering agony of decay and grad- 

 ual solitary death. I wejit, and it was a pleasure to w^eep, for the painful looks and 

 the dreary prospects of this old veteran, whose eyes were dimmed, whose venerable 

 locks were whitened by an hundred years, whose limbs were almost naked and trem- 

 bling as he sat by a small fire which his friends had left him, with a few sticks of 

 wood within his reach and a buffalo's skin stretched upon some crotches over his head. 

 Such was to bo his only dwelling, and such the chances for his life, with only a few 

 half-picked bones that were laid within his reach, and a dish of water, without wea- 

 pon or means of any kind to replenish them, or strength to move his body from its 

 fatal locality. In this sad plight I moui-nfully contemplated this miserable remnant 

 of existence, who had unluckily outlived the fates and accidents of wars to die alone, 

 at death's leisure. His friends and his children had all left him, and Averc preparing 

 in a little time to be on the march. He had told them to leave hiui ; "he was old," 

 he said, "and too feeble to march." " My children," said he, "our nation is poor, and 

 it is necessary that you should all go to the country where you can get meat ; my 

 eyes are dimmed and my strength is no more ; my days are nearly all numbered, and 

 I am a burden to my children ; I cannot go, and I wish to die. Keep your hearts 



