THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 389 



DRESS, MATERIAL, AND ARMS. 



In the vicinity of the month of the Columbia there are, besides the Chinooks, the 

 Klick-a-tacks, Ckeehaylas, Na-as, and many other tribes, whose customs are interest- 

 ing, and of whose manufactures my museum contains many very curious and inter- 

 esting specimens, from which I have inserted a few outlines in Plate 210|, to which the 

 reader will refer. Letter d is a correct drawing of a Chinook canoe ; e, a Na-as war- 

 canoe, curiously carved and painted ; /, two dishes or ladles for bailing their canoes ; 

 g, a Stikeen mask, curiously carved and painted, worn by the mystery-men when in 

 councils, for the purpose of calling up the Great or Evil Spirits to consult on the pol- 

 icy of peace or Avar ; h, custom of the Na-as women of wearing a block of wood in the 

 under lip, which is almost as unaccountable as the custom of flattening the head. 

 Letter i is a drawing of the block, and the exact dimensions of one in the collection, 

 taken out of the lip of a deceased Na-as woman ; k, xoapito diggers, instruments used 

 by the women for digging the wapito, a bulbous root, much like a turnip, which the 

 French traders call pomme blanche, and which I have before described. Letter l,pau- 

 to-mau-gons, or po-ko-mo-kons, war : clubs, the one made by the Indians from a piece of 

 native copper, the other of the sperm bone of the whale. Letter n, two very curi- 

 ously carved pipes, made of black slate and highly polished. 



Besides these, the visitor will find in the collection a great number of their very in- 

 genious articles of dress ; their culinary, war, and hunting implements, as well as 

 specimens of their spinning and weaving, by which they convert dog's hair and the 

 wool of the mountain sheep into durable and splendid robes, the production of which, 

 I venture to say, would bid defiance to any of the looms in the American or British 

 factories. 



The Indians who inhabit the rugged wilderness of the Rocky Mountains are chiefly 

 the Blackfeet and Crows, of whom I have heretofore spoken, and the Shoshonees or 

 Snakes, who are a part of the Camanchees, speaking the same language, and the 

 Slmshokies or root-diggers, who inhabit the southern parts of those vast and wild 

 realms, with the Arapahoes and Navahoes, who are neighbors to the Camanchees on 

 the west, having Santa F6 on the south and the coast of California on the west. Of 

 the Shoshonees and Shoshokies, all travelers who have spoken of them give them a 

 good character, as a kind and hospitable and harmless people ; to which fact I could 



osities to bo met with, anywhere in the United States; and the Governor is so polite as to permit its 

 being visited by any person of respectability at any time."— Edwards's Great West, 1821, page 327. 



"In 1825, Aprd 28, General La Fayette visited Saint Louis. He was the guest of the city, and just 

 before dinner paid a visit to General William Clark, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and was 

 much pleased with the curiosities of an Indian museum which that gentleman had collected during his 

 constant communication with the tribes of the Missouri and the Mississippi." — Ibid., page 338. 



In September, 1838, page 364, Edwards's Great West, occurs this additional reference to the Clark 

 Indian collection : 



' ' Ho was sixty-eight years of age at the time of his death, and had collected a museum of Indian 

 curiosities, which was of much interest, and was visited by the distinguished strangers who came to 

 l he city. His first residence was at the corner of Vine and Main streets, and afterwards on the corner 

 °*Pine and Maine streets." 



In his residence, probably, was his office, and in it, as his council chamber, was the Indian collection, 

 which would now be invaluable, and would cover a period from 1806 to 1838. 



Mr. H. E. Schoolcraft, in 1819, makes the following note of this collection in his view of the "Lead 

 Mines of Missouri," 1818 and 1819. He visited it at Saint Louis July 28, 1819: "Saint Louis has a 

 court-house, jail, theater, three churches, a museum, and several public schools. x * * The museum 

 is the private property of Governor Clark, through whose generosity visitors are gratuitously admitted 

 to view the collection, which is arranged with great taste and effect in the council chamber of his agency. 

 The collection consists of numerous splendid Indian dresses, warlike instruments, skins of remarkable 

 animals, minerals, fossil bones, and other rare and interesting specimens collected by him in his memo- 

 rable tour." 



The most urgent inquiry has failed to get even a trace of this collection after Governor Clark's death. 

 Some of the objects described in the text and on the plate, from the Columbia, are now in the TJ. S. 

 National Museum, having been preserved in the Catlin Museum by Mr. Harrison. These objects are 

 a portion of those collected by Lewis and Clark, and by Governor Clark given to Mr. Catlin.— T. D. 



