604 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



trait of Rushing Eagle, we must remember that Catlin's pictures were 

 necessarily hasty sketches, in which he sought rather to " catch a like- 

 ness" than to copy the face with painstaking exactness, and we must 

 also bear in mind the great difference to be observed between portraits 

 of our own historic men painted by different artists, under different 

 circumstances, and at different periods of life. Often in comparing such 

 portraits we recognize in them a common subject, only by some prominent 

 feature or by the accessories of dress. 



In the picture of Rushing Eagle some expression of sadness or mel- 

 ancholy may be detected, which is not to be seen in the porti'aits of his 

 father and, closely as this engraving copies its original, the sad expres 

 sion is still more pronounced in the ferrotype. Possibly the difference 

 results from the failure on the part of the portrait painter to transfer the 

 mournful glance to his canvas ; but if it is inherent in the living models 

 we need not wonder. Four Bears, when Catlin knew him, was a leader 

 of a happy, well-fed, and prosperous people, while his son, when he sat 

 before the camera, was one of a starved and oppressed remnant, whose 

 horoscope grew darker from day to day. 



PI. cxlii represents the face of an old chief of the Minnetarees, a 

 neighbor and friend of Four Bears, whose hair swept the ground when 

 his tall form stood erect. This is pronounced a wonderful likeness by 

 all who remember the original. As his descendants were mostly females 

 and quite numerous, the demonstrations of recognition and grief over 

 this picture were much more notable than over that of Four Bears. 



PI. cxliii is a reproduction of his much-copied portrait of the famous 

 Iroquois chief whose name is thus mentioned byFitz Greene Halleck : 



Thy name is princely, though no poet's magic, 

 Could make Eed Jacket grace an English rhyme, 



Unless he had a genius for the tragic, 

 And introduced it iuto pautomime. 



The artist indulged him in the wish he expressed, " that he might be 

 seen standing on the table rock at the falls of Niagara, about which 

 place he thought his spirit would linger after he was dead." 



Perhaps it was this portrait that Halleck, in the poem already quoted, 

 referred to when he exclaimed : 



If he were with me, King of Tuscarora, 



Gazing as I, upon thy portrait now, 

 In all its medaled, fringed, and headed glory, 



Its eyes' dark beauty and its thoughtful brow- 

 Its brow half martial and half diplomatic, 



Its eye upsoaring, like an eagle's wings ; 

 Well might he boast that we, the democratic, 



Outrival Europe — even in our kings. 



" Red Jacket " was, however, but a white man's nickname. Had the 

 poet bethought him of the true Indian name he might have found it 

 better suited to his verse. This name was Sagoyeqwatha, or Keeper 



