378 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



In reply the prince wrote as follows : 



Neuwied, Pbussia, December 20, 18G6. 

 To Mr. George Catlin : 



Dear Sir: Your letter of 2d December came safely to hand, and revived the quite 

 forgotten recollections of my stay among the Indian tribes of the Missouri, now thirty- 

 three years past. 



The Mandan tribe, which we both have known so well, and with whom I passed a 

 whole winter, was one of the first to be destroyed by a terrible disease, when all the 

 distinguished chiefs, Mah-to-toh-pa, Char-a-ta, Nu-ma-ka-kie, etc., etc., died; and it is 

 doubtful if a single man of them remained to record the history, customs, and relig- 

 ious ideas of his people. 



Not having been, like yourself, an eye-witness of those remarkable starvations and 

 tortures of the O-kee-pa, but having arrived later, and spent the whole of a winter 

 with the Mandans, I received from all the distinguished chiefs, and from Mr. Kipp 

 (at that time director of Fort Clarke, at the Mandan village, and an excellent inter- 

 preter of the Mandan language) the most detailed and complete record and descrip- 

 tion of the O-kee-pa festival, where the young men suffered a great deal ; and I can 

 attest your relation of it to be a correct one, after all that I heard and observed my- 

 self. 



In my description of my voyage in North America (English edition) I gave a very 

 detailed description of the O-kee-pa, as it was reported to me by all the chiefs and Mr. 

 Kipp, and it is about the same that you told, and nobody would doubt our veracity, 

 I hope. 



I know most of the American works published on the American Indians, and I pos- 

 sess many of them ; but it would be a labor too heavy for my age of eighty-rive years 

 to recapitulate them all. 



Schoolcraft is a writer who knaws well the Indians of his own part of the country, 

 but I do not know his last large work on that matter. If he should doubt what we have 

 both told in our works of the great medicine festivities of the Okee-pa, he would be 

 wrong, certainly. 



If my statement, as that of a witness, could be of use to you, I should bo very 

 pleased. 



Your obedient, 



MAX, PRINCE OF NEUWIED. 



Note. — The " O-kee-pa " (religious ceremony of the Mandans) has just been published 

 in full, with 13 colored illustrations, by Trtibner, 60 Paternoster Row, London, and 

 by Lippincott, of Philadelphia, 1856 ; and the autograph letter of Prince Maximilian, 

 written in English, of which the above is a literal copy, and printed in the work, is in 

 Mr. Tnibner's possession, and since the death of the Prince Maximilian, that letter has 

 been duly attested by Baron Bibra, director of the finances of his highness the Prince, 

 and by the mayor of Neuwied, with the seal of the town of Neuwied attached to it. 

 G. C, 1866. 



Mr. Catlin felt keenly and bitterly this action of Mr. Schoolcraft in 

 these reflections on his truthfulness. In December, 1868, Mr. Catlin 

 prepared at Brussels and forwarded to Congress a petition affirming 

 the correctness of his work in the matter of the Mandans, and showing 

 the fact that the«Government of France had made propositions to him 

 looking to the purchase of his collection in 1864, which was defeated 

 by the statement being made to the French authorities based upon Mr. 

 Schoolcraft's publications that Mr. Catlin's works had been condemned 

 and rejected by the Government of the United States, because deficient 

 in truth. He asked Congress to imrchase a sufficient number of copies 



