THE CATLIN COLLECTION OF INDIAN PAINTINGS. 603 



Mandans. lie had already earned a high reputation for himself as a 

 warrior and counselor. He was very gentle in his manner, reticent, 

 dignified, and disinclined to beg favors of white men. At the time of 

 which I am speaking he was a middle-aged man. His father had been 

 dead over thirty years, and I did not suppose that his recollection of his 

 parent could be very vivid. At the first sight of the picture of Fonr 

 Bears he showed no emotion, although he regarded it long and intently. 

 While he was gazing at it I was called on business out of the room and 

 I left him alone with the book, telling hira, correctly, as I supposed, 

 that I would be gone some time, and asking him not to leave until 1 

 returned ; but in a few moments I was obliged to come back for some- 

 thing I needed. When I reentered the apartment I found him weeping 

 and addressing an eloquent monologue to the picture of his departed 

 father. Of course I intruded as short a time as possible on this scene 

 and lefthim long alone so that he could " have his cry out." * In 1872, 

 when an itinerant photographer made a tour of the Upper Missouri, 

 going as far as the mouth of the Yellowstone, I had a ferrotype of my 

 friend Rushing Eagle made, the pose of the head approximating as 

 closely as possible that of Catlin's picture of Four Bears. I have 

 carried this ferrotype around with me ever since, and quite recently I 

 have had it copied with admirable fidelity by the Moss Engraving 

 Company, of New York ("Mosstype"). I desire here to call atten- 

 tion to this picture (PI. cxli) in connection with Catlin's portrait 

 of the elder chief taken forty years earlier, and for this reason I intro- 

 duced a copy of a portion (PI. cxl) of Catlin's etching of Four 

 Bears, which latter is a full-length portrait. The old men of the tribe 

 told me that Rushing Eagle was the image of his father. Such a 

 great resemblance does not appear in the etching ; there is a general 

 likeness, but taking feature for feature there is much dissimilarity. 

 Remembering that Catlin's original pictures of the Indians were oil 

 paintings, and that the etchings were but copies, I determined to 

 examine the original which now hangs with the rest of Catlin's col- 

 lection on the south wall of this hall. I have compared it with the etch- 

 ing and with the picture of Rushing Eagle. It is evident that the etch- 

 ing is not a careful copy of the oil painting and that the latter bears a 

 greater resemblance to the picture of Rushing Eagle 'than the former. 

 In the painting the line which marks the anterior border of the cheek 

 comes in a straight line down to the angle of the mouth as in the face 

 of Rushing Eagle. The etching shows a mouth of classic curves ; the 

 oil painting represents a well-formed but unconventional mouth like 

 that seen in the accompanying Mosstype. The jaw in the painting, 

 like that in the Mosstype, is heavier than in the etching. In both the 

 etching and the painting the eye seems set unnaturally far back. 

 In comparing the etching, or even the original painting, with the por- 



* This account has previously appeared in the "American Antiquarian " for Sep- 

 tember, 1888. 



