488 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



made preparations for their departure, and -on the next day started, with an escort of 

 dragoons, for their own country. This movement is much to be regretted ; for it 

 would have been exceedingly gratifying to the people of the East to have seen so 

 wild a group, and it would have been of great service to them to have visited Wash- 

 ington — a journey, though, which they could not be prevailed upon to make. 



INDIAN PORTRAITS. 



We brought with us to this place three of the principal chiefs of the Pawnees, fifteen 

 Kioways, one Camanchee, and one Wico chief. The group was undoubtedly one of the 

 most interesting that ever visited our frontier, and I have taken the utmost pains in 

 painting the portraits of all of them, as well as seven of the Camanchee chiefs, who 

 came part of the way with us, and turned back. These portraits, together with other 

 paintings which I have made, descriptive of their manners and customs, views of 

 their villages, landscapes of tlie country, &c, will soon be laid before the amateurs 

 of the East, and, I trust, will be found to be very interesting. 



Although the achievement has been a handsome one — of bringing these unknown 

 people to an acquaintance and a general peace, and at first sight would appear to be 

 of great benefit to them — yet I have my strong doubts whether it will better their 

 condition, unless with the exercised aid of the strong arm of Government they can 

 be protected in the rights which by nature they are entitled to. 



TRADE WITH THE INDIANS— ITS EVILS. 



There is already in this place a company of eighty men fitted out, who are to start 

 to-morrow to overtake these Indians, a few miles from this place, and to accompany 

 them home, with a large stock of goods, with traps for catching beavers, &c, calcu- 

 lating to build a trading-house amongst them, where they will amass at once an im- 

 mense fortune, being the first traders and trappers that have ever been in that part 

 of the country. 



I have traveled too much among Indian tribes, and seen too much, not to know the 

 evil consequences of such a system. Goods are sold at such exorbitant prices that 

 the Indian gets a mere shadow for his peltries, &c. The Indians see no white people 

 but traders and sellers of whisky, and of course judge us all by»them; they conse- 

 quently hold us, and always will, in contempt, as inferior to themselves, as they have 

 reason to do, and they neither fear nor respect us. When, on the contrary, if the Gov- 

 ernment would promptly prohibit such establishments, and invite these Indians to our 

 frontier posts, they would bring in their furs, their robes, horses, mules, &c, to this 

 place, where there is a good market for them all, where they would get the full value 

 of tfreir property, where there are several stores of goods, where there is an honorable 

 competition, and where they would get four or five times as much for their articles of 

 trade as they would get from a trader in the village, out of the reach of competition 

 and out of sight of the civilized world. 



At the same time, as they would be continually coming where they would see good 

 and polished society, they would be gradually adopting our modes of living, intro- 

 ducing to their country our vegetables, our domestic animals, poultry, &c, and at 

 length our arts and manufactures ; they would see and estimate our military strength 

 and advantages, and would be led to fear and respect us. In short, it would un- 

 doubtedly be the quickest and surest way to a general acquaintance, to friendship 

 and peace, and at last to civilization. If there is a law in existence for such protec- 

 tion of the Indian tribes, which may have been waived in the case of those nations 

 with which we have long traded, it is a great pity that it should not be rigidly en- 

 forced in this new and important acquaintance which we have just made with thirty 

 or forty thousand strangers to the civilized world, yet, as we have learned from their 

 unaffected hospitality when in their villages, with hearts of human mold, susceptible 

 of all the noble feelings belonging to civilized man. 



