THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 433 



and encamped about the fort a great many, and I am continually at work with my 

 brush. We have around us at this time the Knisteneaux, Crows, Assinneboines, and 

 Blackfeet, and in a few days are to have large accessions. 



The finest specimens of Indians on the continent are in these regions, and before 

 I leave these parts I shall make excursions into their respective countries, to their 

 own native fire-sides, and there study their looks and peculiar customs, enabling 

 me to drop you now and then an interesting letter. The tribes which I shall be en- 

 abled to see and study by my visit to this region are the Ojibbeways, the Assinne- 

 boines, Knisteneaux, Blackfeet, Crows, Shiennes, Grosventres, Mandans, and others; 

 of whom and their customs, their history, traditions, costumes, &c, I shall, in due 

 season, give you further and minute accounts. — G. C, Ibid. 



The series of portraits of the above tribes herein given, and land- 

 scapes, hunting scenes, games and amusements, were the result of this 

 early summer's work at Fort Union in 1832. From here he writes. 

 Here he employed two men, Batiste and Bogard, trappers and hunters, 

 to go with him in his canoe down the river on the return voyage to 

 Saint Louis. 



[Letter from the mouth of Yellowstone, Upper Missouri.] 



I have been taking some wild rambles about this beautiful country of green fields, 

 jolted and tossed about, on horseback and on foot, where pen, ink, and paper never 

 thought of going, and, of course, the most that I saw and have learned, and would 

 tell to the world, is yet to be written. It is not probable, however, that I shall again 

 date a letter at this place, as I commence, in a few days, my voyage down the river 

 in a canoe; but yet I may give you many a retrospective glance at this fairy land and 

 its amusements. 



A traveler on his tour through such a country as this has no time to write, and 

 scarcely time enough to moralize. It is as much as he can well do to " lookout for his 

 scalp" and "for something to eat." Impressions, however, of the most vivid kind 

 are rapidly and indelibly made by the fleeting incidents of savage life, and for the 

 mind that can ruminate upon them with pleasure there are abundant materials cling- 

 ing to it for its endless entertainment in driving the quill when he gets back. The 

 mind susceptible of such impressions catches volumes of incidents which are easy to 

 write; it is but to unfold a web which the fascinations of this shorn country and its 

 allurements have spun over the soul ; it is but to paint the splendid panorama of a 

 world entirely different from anything seen or painted before, with its thousands of 

 miles and tens of thousands of grassy hills and dales, where naught but silence 

 reigns, and where the soul of a contemplative mould is seemingly lifted up to its 

 Creator. What man in the world, I would ask, ever ascended to the pinnacle of one 

 of Missouri's green-carpeted bluffs, a thousand miles severed from his own familiar 

 land, and giddily gazed over the interminable and boundless ocean of grass-covered 

 hills and valleys which lie beneath him, where the gloom of silence is complete, where 

 not even the voice of the sparrow or cricket is heard, without feeling a sweet mel- 

 ancholy come over him, which seemed to drown his sense of everything beneath and 

 on a level with him ? 



It is but to paint a vast country of green fields, where the men are all red ; where 

 meat is the staff of life ; where no laws but those of honor are known ; where the oak 

 and the pine give way to the cottonwood and pecan ; where the buffaloes range, the 

 elk, mountain-sheep, and the fleet-bounding antelope ; where the magpie and chat- 

 tering paroquets supply the place of the red-breast and the blue-bird; where 

 wolves are white and bears grizzly; where pheasants are hens of the prairie and frogs 

 have horns ; where the rivers are yellow and white men are turned savages in looks. 

 Through the whole of this strange land the dogs are all wolves, women all slaves, 

 men all lords. The sun and rats alone (of all the list of old acquaintance) could be 

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