778 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



And this petition shows that several years after the above appeal to the Congress 

 of my country, unfortunate speculations into which I was led in London brought 

 liens on the collection, which I had not the means to remove ; but that Mr. Joseph 

 Harrison, of Philadelphia, then in London, in a noble and patriotic generosity, to 

 save the collection to our country, paid off the liens and shipped the collection to 

 Philadelphia, where it has since remained in storage, under his protection and care, 

 until the present day, with accumulating expenses growing upon it. 



That on being severed from my collection I made voyages to South and Central 

 America, and up the Pacific coast of North America to Oregon, to Queen Charlotte's, 

 to Alaska, and Kamskatka ; and with several years of great labor and privation, made 

 the numerous " Cartoon Collection" to which I invited your attention a few weeks 

 since (and which it is hoped you may yet examine) in the great hall of the Smithso- 

 nian Institution, and for the ultimate disposal of which, either by my children or 

 myself, I have at present no anxiety — but that in my old age, after I have devoted a 

 long life of hard labor and all that I have possessed in the world for the history of 

 our country, I am suffering intensely in feelings from the fear that the six hundred 

 Indian portraits and other paintings of the first-named collection, with its museum 

 of Indian manufactures (as enumerated in the accompanying catalogue), maybe cast 

 upon the world without the finish and arrangement which they require, and which 

 no one but myself can give them. That in the distress of that feeling, increased by 

 age and infirmity, I respectfully and humbly beg to present to your honorable body 

 the following petition, to wit : 



That a bill may be framed and passed by the present Congress of my country, ap- 

 propriating for the said collection of paintings and Indian manufactures the sum rec- 

 ommended as "moderate" by the Joint Committee on the Library in 1846 (whose re- 

 port is hereto attached), enabling me to pay off the heavy liens on the collection, to 

 reserve a small pittance for my children, to deliver the collection entire into the hands 

 of the Government of my country, and to devote, whilst I have the health and strength 

 to do it, the labor requisite to clean, to retouch, and finish and arrange the whole for 

 perpetuity, at my own expense, as the anibition of my life has constantly prompted 

 me to do. 



From the appended opinions of American artists, of Daniel Webster and General 

 Cass, and the numerous certificates hereto attached, as well as from the important 

 fact that these paintings were made and the Indian manufactures gathered thirty 

 and forty years ago, when the Indian's modes and customs were more primitive than 

 at the present time, your petitioner has every confidence in the last appeal that he 

 can make, that his works will be duly appreciated by the Government of his coun- 

 try; and for the granting of this, his petition, he will ever earnestly and confidently 



pray. 



GEORGE CATLIN. 



December, 1871. 



The efiforts at Congressional purcliase in 1872 and 1874 were made in 

 behalf of his family. 



