LANDSCAPES, SPORTING SCENES, MANNERS AND CUS- 

 TOMS. 



[Pages 31-47 Catlin's Catalogues from 1838-1843 ; pages 33-51 Catlin's Catalogue of 



1848.] 



IjANDSCAPES. 



Nos. 311 to 403. 



311. Saint Louis (from the river below, in 1832 and in 1836), a town on the Missis- 

 sippi, with 25,000 inhabitants.* (No plate.) 



The steamboat Yellowstone in the river, starting on lier voyage up 

 the Missouri and to the Yellowstone, in May, 1832. On the deck can 

 be seen the Indians who were passengers and other travelers. As a 

 specimen of inland water craft the Yellowstone is a novel one. 



Mr. Catlin was first in Saint Louis in 1829, and from that period until 

 1838^ was frequently there. It was in fact the depot for him for out- 

 fitting for his Indian travels, and to it he forwarded his Indian collec- 

 tions and paintings. 



Saint Louis had been for more than thirty years prior to Mr. Catlin's 

 visiting it the headquarters for western fur traders, trappers, and 

 hunters. Choteau, Berthold, Manuel Lisa, and other Indian traders 

 had made it famous. William Clark, of Lewis and Clark, explora- 

 tion fame, had been a resident since 1808, and the Indian service, of 

 which he was superintendent in 1829, made Saint Louis its depot. 

 The army for the West and Northwest had its main post here, and the 

 contractors for its supplies usually forwarded them by river for Saint 

 Louis, either by the Missouri or Mississippi and their tributaries. 



In 1832 Mr. Catlin writes of Saint Louis, on his return from the Upper 

 Missouri, in a canoe with Batiste and Bogard, a 2,000-mile journey : 



When we landed at the wharf my luggage was all taken out and removed to my 

 hotel, and when I returned a few hours afterwards to look for my little boat, to 

 which I had contracted a peculiar attachment (although I had left it in special charge 

 of a person at work on the wharf), some mystery or medicine operation Lad relieved 

 me from any further anxiety or trouble about it — it had gone and never returned, 

 although it had safely passed the countries of mysteries, and had often laid weeks 

 and months at the villages of red men, with no laws to guard it, and where it had also 



*In 1880 Saint Louis had a population of 350.518. 



231 



