, THE CATLIN COLLECTION OF INDIAN PAINTINGS. 597 



daylight, and you will see that the artist well appreciated the distinc- 

 tive beauties of different landscapes— the odd. the peculiar, the strik- 

 ing. There is not a remarkable scene on the Upper Missouri from the 

 Platte to the Yellowstone that he has not transferred to his canvas. To 

 the beauties of the Upper Mississippi he has done a justice which Bau- 

 vard did not excel. If he has worked so faithfully on these beautiful 

 bnt comparatively tame landscapes, how would the iu finitely grander 

 scenes of the Rocky Mountains have inspired him 1 Could he have held 

 his brush still in sight of them 1 Yet no view of that vast mountain 

 region is to be found in his collection, with the possible exception of 

 some ridges seen from the Comanche camp iu 1834, which may have 

 been outlying spurs of the Sierra Madre. Pike's Tent, an odd and beau- 

 tiful but comparatively insignificant bluff, some five hundred feet high, 

 on the upper Mississippi, has a canvas allotted to it in the Gallery, but 

 for a view of Pike's Peak, fourteen thousand feet high and covered with 

 eternal snows, we seek iu vain. In vain do we search for a view of a 

 single one of the mouarchs of the Chippewyan Range. 



As is well known, literature has always had its requirements, which 

 varied according to time, race and country. But, as is not so gener- 

 ally recognized, science too has had its requirements in times past, 

 which limited and controlled its development. Perhaps it has its arbi- 

 trary and illogical requirements to day, while we are not aware of thera. 

 The slave knows not how deeply the fetter has cut into his flesh until 

 it has been cast away. 



There was a singular demand made on the American ethnographer 

 of a generation or two ago, and it has scarcely yet been silenced. He 

 was obliged to advance a theory of an Old World origin for the Ameri- 

 can aborigines, and if not for the whole race, at least for that part of it 

 in which he was most interested. The shelves of libraries of Ameri- 

 cana are crowded with volumes devoted to proving such theories. Such 

 an important place in the speculations of that time did these theories 

 have, that a great religious system (a system which forms to-day one 

 of the greatest political problems that confront us) is based upon the 

 theory of the descent of the Indians from the ten lost tribes of Israel. 

 We can understand Catlin's environment better, when we remember 

 that he lived in the time the angel Moroni revealed to Joseph Smith 

 the hiding place of the golden tablets on which was engraved the book 

 of Mormon. 



Catlin's journey in 1832 on the Upper Missouri was his first impor- 

 tant expedition, his first journey into a really wild land,, as well as the 

 most fruitful journey in artistic and ethnographic material that he ever 

 made. His most interesting observations were taken among a seden- 

 tary, house-building, agricultural people named Mandans. Tribes of 

 this class were not uncommon in America in his day, but at the time 

 of his visit he was not aware of the fact. In the Mandan villages he 

 found a hospitable and intelligent trader named Joseph Kipp, who 



