the catlin collection of india.n paintings. 601 



'ceremony to be hereafter described. The scene in PI. cxxxvi, Fig'. 2, 

 is presented, not because it is the most picturesque of this class that he 

 has painted, but because, simple as it is, he has caught the spirit of the 

 situation so well. The pose of the men who are betting on the game 

 and watching anxiously the fall of the hoop is excellent. I have heard 

 many favorable comments made on this plate by Indians. This game 

 of Tchung-kee was, with some modifications, practiced over the greater 

 part of North America at the time of the discovery and until long after. 



Catlin devotes four canvasses to illustrating the exciting ball game of 

 the Choctaws. One of his illustrations is shown in PL cxxxvu. He 

 tells us that it is impossible with pen and ink alone, or brush, or even 

 with their combined efforts to give more than a caricature of such a 

 scene. However true this remark may be it is not to be denied that 

 he here presents to us an unusually lively spectacle. 



But the great temptation to present more illustrations of Indian 

 games, some of which I have had the good fortune to witness, must be 

 resisted. 



The majority of his hunting scenes represent an irreclaimable past, 

 since they are largely associated with an animal practically extinct, the 

 American bison or buffalo. Catlin had the true spirit of the hunter; he 

 was an excellent rider, a good shot, and for these reasons he delighted 

 in painting hunting scenes, and he infuses more life into such studies thau 

 into any others which he executed. PI. cxxxvni, represents the de- 

 struction of a small band of buffalo which he witnessed near the Mandan 

 villages. His pen picture of the scene is no less vivid than the work 

 of his brush. Of course such paintings as this must have been largely 

 worked up after the occasion, from hasty sketches and from memory, 

 notes, and imagination ; but they are none the less valuable on that ac- 

 count. The instantaneous camera came too late for the buffalo sur- 

 round. But had it come in time, it might not have caught as much of 

 the scene as the artist's eye has caught. 



PI. cxxxvi, Fig. 1, represents his own first chase on horseback after 

 the buffalo at the mouth of the Yellowstone, in 1832, in company with 

 Kenneth Mackenzie, — whose name was famous in the annals of the old 

 trading days of the Northwest, — and a French Canadian named Chad- 

 ron. As he puts himself into this picture (he is the rider in the back- 

 ground ; it is Chadron who is climbing his charger's neck), it is reasona- 

 ble to suppose that while he was riding his horse after the bison he was 

 not also standing on the ground and making a sketch of himself. This 

 picture is therefore a composition. 



So also is the illustration presented in PL cxxxix, natural and real- 

 istic as it seems. Mr. Catlin saw all the elements of this picture in dif- 

 ferent places and at different times ; his artistic imagination has com- 

 bined them and given us a pleasing, and for all purposes of illustration 

 a truthful, picture. He saw walking Indians in one place, snowshoes in 

 another, walking buffaloes in the summer in the far West, snow in some 



