208 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



287.* Ah-hee-te-wah-chee, a very pretty woman, in civilized dress, her hair falling 

 over her shoulders. Painted in 183G. 



(See Plate No. 216, page 119, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years.) 



Mr. Catlin's observations on this picture will be found on page 119, 

 vol. 2 of his Eight Years — a mere incidental mention. 



A series of Cherokee portraits are given in the Hayden Catalogue, 

 Nos. 66 to 72, page 103. 



MR. CATLIN'S NOTES ON THE CHEROKEE INDIANS. 



The Cherokees living in the vicinity of and ahout Fort Gibson, on the Arkansas, and 

 seven hundred miles we^t of the Mississippi River, are a third part or more of the once 

 very numerous and powerful tribe who inhabited and still inhabit a considerable part 

 of the State of Georgia, and under a treaty made with the United States Government 

 have been removed to those regions, where they are settled on a fine tract of country ; 

 and having advanced somewhat in tho arts and agriculture before they started, are 

 now found to be mostly living well, cultivating their fields of corn and other crops, 

 which they raise with great success. 



Under a serious difficulty existing between these people (who by former solemn 

 treaties with the United States Government were acknowledged a free and independ- 

 ent nation, with powers to make and enforce their own laws) and the State of 

 Georgia, which could not admit such a government within her sovereignty, it was 

 thought most expedient by the Government of the United States to propose to them, 

 for the fourth or fifth time, to enter into treaty stipulations again to move, and by so 

 doing to settle the difficult question with the State of Georgia, and at the same time 

 to place them in peaceable possession of a large tract of fine country, where they would 

 forever be free from the continual trespasses and abuses which it was supposed they 

 would be subjected to if they were to remain in the State of Georgia, under the pres- 

 ent difficulties and the highly excited feelings which were then existing in the minds 

 of many people along their borders. 



I have traveled pretty generally through the several different locations of this in- 

 teresting tribe, both in the western and eastern divisions, and have found them, as 

 well as the Choctaws and Creeks, their neighbors, very far advanced in the arts, af- 

 fording to the world the most satisfactory evidences that are to be found in America 

 of the fact that the Indian was not made to shun and evade good example, and nec- 

 essarily to live and die a brute, as many speculating men would needs record them 

 and treat them, until they are robbed and trampled into the dust ; that no living evi- 

 dences might give the lie to their theories, or draw the cloak from their cruel and 

 horrible iniquities. 



As I have repeatedly said to my readers, in the course of my former epistles, that 

 the greater part of my time would be devoted to the condition and customs of the 

 tribes that might be found in their primitive state, they will feel disposed to pardon 

 me for barely introducing the Cherokees and several others of these very interesting 

 tribes, and leaving them and their customs and histories (which are of themselves 

 enough for volumes) to the reader, who is, perhaps, nearly as familiar as I am myself 

 with the full and fair accounts of these people, who have had their historians and 

 biographers. 



The history of the Cherokees and other numerous remnants of tribes, who are the 

 exhabitants of the finest and most valued portions of the United States, is a subject 

 of great interest and importance, and has already been woven into the most valued 

 histories of the country, as well as forming material parts of the archives of the Gov- 

 ernment, which is my excuse for barely introducing the reader to them, and beckon- 

 ing him off again to the native and untrodden wilds, to teach him something new and 

 unrecorded. Yet I leave the subject as I left the people (to whom I became attached, 



* Lost or destroyed. 



