THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 101 



large part of the States of Mississippi and Alabama, where they have laid their 

 bones and hundreds of their skulls have been procured, bearing incontrovertible evi- 

 dence of a similar treatment with similar results. 



The Choctaws who are now living do not flatten the head ; the custom, like that of 

 the medicine-bag and many others which the Indians have departed from, from the 

 assurances of white people that they were of no use and were utterly ridiculous to 

 be followed. Whilst among the Choctaws I could learn little more from tho people 

 about such a custom than that "their old men recollected to have heard it spoken 

 of," which is much less satisfactory evidence than inquisitive white people get by 

 referring to the grave, which the Indian never meddles with. 



BLACKFEET. 

 [Blackfeet: Laws of the United States. Bluckfeet: Indian Bureau, 1885.] 



A tribe of the Sioux or Dahkota Nation. [Algonkin? T. 1).] * 



A very warlike and hostile tribe of 50,000, including the Peagans (Piegans) Cotonne's 

 and Gros-Ventres (de Prairies), occupying the headwaters of the Missouri, extending 

 a great way into the British territory on the north and into the Rocky Mountains on 

 the west. Rather low in stature, broad-chested, square-shouldered, richly clad, and 

 well armed, living in skin lodges; 1*2,000 of them destroyed by small-pox within the 

 year 1838 ! 



Mr. Catlin was first with the Blackfeet at Fort Union in 1832. 



149. Stu-mick-o-sticks, the Buffalo's Back Fat ; chief of the tribe, in a splendid cos- 

 tume, richly garnished with porcupine-quills, and fringed with scalp-locks. 

 Painted in 1832. 



(Plate No. 11, page 5, vol. 1, Catlin's Eight Years.) 



I have this day been painting a portrait of the head chief of the Blackfeet Nation ; 

 he is a good-looking and dignified Indian, about fifty years of age, and superbly 

 dressed (Plate 11, No. 149). Whilst sitting for his picture he has been surrounded by 

 his own braves and warriors, and also gazed at by his enemies, the Crows and the 

 Knisteneaux, Assiuneboins and Ojibbeways; a number of distinguished personages 

 of each of which tribes have laid all day around the sides of my room, reciting to 

 each other the battles they have fought and pointing to the scalp-locks worn as proofs 

 of their victories, and attached to the seams of their shirts and leggiugs. This is a 

 curious scene to witness, when one sits in the midst of such inflammable and com- 

 bustible materials, brought together, unarmed, for the first time in their lives, peace- 

 ably and calmly recounting over the deeds of their lives, and smoking their pipes 

 upon it, when a few weeks or days will bring them on the plains again, where the 

 war-cry will be raised and their deadly bows will again be drawn on each other. 



The name of this dignitary of whom I have just spoken is Stu-mick-o-sticks (the 

 Buffalo's Back Fat), i. e., the "hump," or " fleece," the most delicious part of the 

 buffalo's flesh,. The dress, for instance, of the chief whom I have j ust mentioned, and 

 whose portrait I have just painted, consists of a shirt, or tunic, made of two deer- 

 skins finely dressed, and so placed together with the necks of the skins downwards, 

 and the skins of the hind legs stitched together, the seams running down on each 

 arm from the neck to the knuckles of the hand. This seam is covered with a band 

 of two inches in width, of very beautiful embroidery of porcupine quills, and sus- 

 pended from the under edge of this, from the shoulders to the hands, is a fringe of the 

 locks of black hair which he has taken from the heads of victims slain by his own 

 hand in battle. The leggings are made also of the same material, and down the outer 

 side of the leg, from the hip to the feet, extends also a similar band or belt of the 

 same width, and wrought in the same manner, with porcupine quills, and fringed 

 with scalp-locks. These locks of hair are procured from scalps and worn as trophies. 



* Mr. Catlin met both Blackfeet and Blackfeet Sioux. Hence the error. 



