198 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



Mr. Catlin saw the Delawares oil their reservation on the Kaw, now 

 Kansas, River, in 1831-'32. 



274. Bod-a-sin ; the chief; a distinguished man. (No plate.) 



275. Ni-co-man, the Answer; the second chief, with bow and arrows in his hand. 



Painted in 1831 r '32. 



(Plate No. 197, page 102, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years.) 



276. Non-on-da-gon, ; a chief, with a ring in his nose. Painted in 1831-32. 



(Plate No. 198, page 102, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years.) 

 Non-on-dd-gon, with a silver ring in his nose, is another of the chiefs of distinction, 

 whose history I admired very much, and whom, from his gentlemanly attentions to 

 me, I became much attached to. In both of these instances (Nos. 275, 276) their dresses 

 were principally of stuffs of civilized manufacture, and their heads were bound with 

 vari-colored handkerchiefs or shawls, which were tastefully put on like a Turkish 

 turban. — G. C. 



MR. CATLIN'S NOTES ON THE DELAWARE INDIANS. 



The very sound of this name [Delawares] has carried terror wherever it has been 

 heard in the Indian wilderness; and it has traveled and been known, as well as the 

 people, over a very great part of the continent. This tribe originally occupied a great 

 part of the eastern border of Pennsylvania, and great part of the States of New Jersey 

 and Delaware. No other tribe on the continent has been so much moved and jostled 

 about by civilized invasions ; and none have retreated so far, or fought their way so 

 desperately, as they have honorably and bravely contended for every foot of the 

 ground they have passed over. From the banks of the Delaware to the lovely Susque- 

 hanna, and my native valley, and to the base of and over the Alleghany Mountains, to 

 the Ohio River, to the Illinois and the Mississippi, and at last to the west of the 

 Missouri, they have been moved by treaties after treaties with the Government, who 

 have now assigned to the mere handful of them that are left a tract of land, as has 

 been done a dozen times before, in fee simple, forever ! In every move the poor fellows 

 have made they have been thrust against their wills from the graves of their fathers 

 and their children, aud planted, as they now are, on the borders of new enemies, 

 where their first occupation has been to take up their weapons in self-defense, and 

 fight for the ground they have been planted on. There is no tribe, perhaps, amongst 

 which greater and more continued exertions have been made for their conversion to 

 Christianity — and that ever since the zealous efforts of the Moravian missionaries, 

 who first began with them — nor any amongst whom those pious and zealous efforts 

 have been squandered more in vain, which has, probably, b«en owing to the bad 

 faith with which they have so often and so continually been treated by white people, 

 which has excited prejudices that have stood in the way of .their mental improvement. 



This scattered and reduced tribe, which once contained some 10,000 or 15,000, numbers 

 at this time but 800; and the greater part of them have been, for the fifty or sixty 

 years past, residing in Ohio and Indiana. In these States their reservations became 

 surrounded by white people, whom they dislike for neighbors, and their lands too 

 valuable for Indians, and the certain consequence has been that they have sold out 

 and taken lands west of the Mississippi, onto which they have moved, and on which 

 it is, and always will be, almost impossible to find them, owing to their desperate 

 disposition for roaming about, indulging in the chase and in wars with their enemies. 



The wild frontier on which they are now placed affords them so fine an opportunity 

 to indulge both of these propensities, that they will be continually wandering in little 

 and desperate parties over the vast buffalo plains, and exposed to their enemies, till 

 at last the new country, which is given to them in " fee simple, forever," aud which 

 is destitute of game, will be deserted, and they, like the most of the removed rem- 

 nants of tribes, will be destroyed, and the faith of the Government well preserved, 

 which has offered this as their last move, and theso lauds as theirs in fee simple, forever. 



