472 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



little purpose, and then abandoned it to Bogard alone, who thankfully received the 

 dry coffee-grounds and sugar at his meals, which lie soon entirely demolished. — Pages 

 12, 13, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years. 



Mr. Catlin's Journey down the Missouri in 1832 from old 



Fort Pierre. 



Mr. Catlin's letter from Fort Leavenworth, in the fall of 1832, he thus 

 speaks of his river journey : 



The readers, I presume, will have felt some anxiety for me and the fate of my little 

 craft after the close of my last letter ; and I have the very great satisfaction of an- 

 nouncing to them that we escaped snags and sawyers and every other danger, and 

 arrived here safe from the Upper Missouri, where my last letters were dated. We 

 (that is, Ba'tiste, Bogard, and I) are comfortably quartered for a while in the bar- 

 racks of this hospitable cantonment, which is now the extreme Western military force 

 on the frontier, and under the command of Colonel Davenport, a gentleman of great 

 urbanity of manners, with a Roman head and a Grecian heart, restrained and tem- 

 pered by the charms of an American lady, who has elegantly pioneered the graces of 

 civilized refinements into these uncivilized regions. 



This cantonment, which is beautifully situated on the west bank of the Missouri 

 River, and 600 miles above its mouth, was constructed some yearssince by General Leav- 

 enworth, from whom it has taken its name. Its location is very beautiful, and so is 

 the country around it. It is the concentration point of a number of hostile tribes in 

 the vicinity, and has its influence in restraining their warlike propensities. 



There is generally a regiment of men stationed here, for the purpose of holding the 

 Indians in check and of preserving the peace amongst the hostile tribes. I shall visit 

 several tribes in this vicinity, and most assuredly give you some further account of 

 them as fast as I get it. 



Since the date of my last epistles I succeeded in descending the river to this place 

 in my little canoe, with my two men at the oars, and myself at the helm, steering its 

 course the whole way amongst snags and sand-bars. 



My voyage from the mouth of the Teton River to this place has been the most 

 rugged, yet the most delightful, of my whole tour. Our canoe was generally landed 

 at night on the point of some projecting barren sand-bar, where we straightened our 

 limbs on our buffalo robes, secure from the annoyance of mosquitoes, and out of the 

 walks of Indians and grizzly bears. In addition to the opportunity which this de- 

 scending tour has afforded me of visiting all the tribes of Indians on the river, and 

 leisurely filling my portfolio with the beautiful scenery which its shores present, the 

 sportsman's fever was roused and satisfied ; the swan, ducks, geese, and pelicans; 

 the deer, antelope, elk, and buffaloes, were stretched by our rifles; and sometimes — 

 " pull, boys, pull ! a war party ! for your lives pull, or we are gone!" 



I often landed my skiff and mounted the green-carpeted bluffs, whose soft grassy 

 tops invited me to recline, where I was at once lost in contemplation. Soul-melting 

 scenery that was about me ! A place where the mind could think volumes ; but tbe 

 tongue must be silent that would speak, and the hand palsied that would write. A 

 place where a divine would confess that he never had fancied Paradise ; where the 

 painter's palette would lose its beautiful tints, the blood-stirring notes of eloquence 

 would die in their utterance, and even the soft tones of sweet music would scarcely 

 preserve a spark to light the soul again that had passed this sweet delirium. I mean 

 the prairie, whose enameled plains that lie beneath me in distance soften into sweet- 

 ness like an essence ; whose thousand thousand velvet-covered hills (surely never 

 formed by chance, but grouped in one of nature's sportive moods) tossing and leap- 

 ing down with steep or graceful declivities to the river's edge, as if to grace its pic- 

 tured shores and make it " a thing to look upon." I mean the prairie at sunset, 

 when the green hill-tops are turned into gold, and. their long shadows of melancholy 





