416 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



tracts of country, which are now properly denominated " the great buffalo plains," a 

 series of exceedingly elevated plateaus of steppes or prairies, lying at and near the 

 base of the Rocky Mountains. 



It is a fact, then,, which I presume will be new to most of the world, that meat can 

 be cured in the sun without the aid of smoke or salt ; and it is a fact equally true and 

 equally surprising also, that none of these tribes use salt in any way, although their 

 country abounds in salt springs ; and in many places, in the frequent walks of the 

 Indian, the prairie may be seen, for miles together, covered with an incrustation of 

 salt as white as the drifted snow. 



I have, in traveling with Indians, encamped by such places, where they have 

 cooked and eaten their meat, when I have been unable to prevail on them to use salt 

 in any quantity whatever. The Indians cook their meat more than the civilized peo- 

 ple do, and I have long since learned, from necessity, that meat thus cooked can easily 

 be eaten and relished too, without salt or other condiment. 



The fact above asserted applies exclusively to those tribes of Indians which I have 

 found in their primitive state, living entirely on meat; but everywhere along our 

 1 frontier, where the game of the country has long since been chiefly destroyed, and 

 these people have become semi-civilized, raising and eating, as we do, a variety of 

 vegetable food, they use (and no doubt require) a great deal of salt; and in many 

 instances use it even to destructive excess. — Pages 123,124, vol. 1, Catlin's Eight Years. 



THE INDIAN FOP OR BEAUX. 



Mr.Catlin, in his account of a Mandan Village, in 1832, thus describes 

 the Indian beaux : 



Besides chiefs and braves and doctors, of whom I have heretofore spoken, there is 

 yet another character of whom I must say a few words before I proceed to other 

 topics. The person I allude to is the one mentioned at the close of my last letter, and 

 familiarly known and countenanced in every tribe as an Indian beau or dandy. Such 

 personages may be seen on every pleasant day strutting and parading around the 

 village in the most beautiful and unsoiled dresses, without the honorable trophies, 

 however, of scalp-locks and claws of the grizzly bear attached to their costume, for 

 with those things they deal not. They are not peculiarly anxious to hazard their 

 lives in equal and honorable combat with the one, or disposed to cross the path with 

 the other, but generally remain about the village to take care of the women, and at- 

 tire themselves in the skins of such animal as they can easily kill, without seeking 

 the rugged cliffs for the war-eagle, or visiting the haunts of the grizzly bear. They 

 plume themselves with swan's-down and quills of ducks, with braids and plaits of 

 sweet-scented grass and other harmless and unmeaning ornaments, which have no 

 other merits than they themselves have, that of looking pretty and ornamental. 



These clean and elegant gentlemen, who are very few in each tribe, are held in very 

 little estimation by the chiefs and braves, inasmuch as it is known by all that they 

 have a most horrible aversion to arms, and are denominated " faint hearts" or "old 

 women" by the whole tribe, and are therefore but little respected. They seem, how- 

 ever, to "be tolerably well contented with the appellation, together with the celebrity 

 they have acquired amongst the women and children for the beauty and elegance of 

 their personal appearance ; and most of them seem to take and enjoy their share of the 

 world's pleasures, although they are looked upon as drones in society. 



These gay and tinseled bucks may be seen on a pleasant day in all their plumes, 

 astride of their pied or dappled, ponies, with a fan in the right hand, made of a tur- 

 key's tail, with whip and a fly-brush attached to the wrist of the same hand, and un- 

 derneath them a white, beautiful, and soft pleasure-saddle, ornamented with porcu- 

 pine quills and ermine, parading through and lounging about the village for an hour 

 or so, when they will cautiously bend their course to the suburbs of the town, where 



