THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 491 



SALTPETER AND SALT. 



Of saltpeter and salt there are also endless supplies : so it will be seen that the min- 

 eral resources of this wilderness country are inexhaustible and rich, and that the idle 

 savage, who never converts them to his use, must soon yield thera to the occupation 

 of enlightened and cultivating man. 



INDIANS AT PORT GIBSON. 



In the vicinity of this post there are an immense number of Indians, most of whom 

 have been removed to their present locations by the Government, from their eastern 

 original j>ositions, within a few years past, and previous to my starting with the 

 dragoons. I had two months at my leisure, in this section of the country, which I 

 used in traveling about with my canvas and note-book, and visiting all of them in 

 in their villages. I have made many paintings amongst them, and have a curious 

 note-book to open at a future clay, for which the reader may be prepared. The tribes 

 whom I thus visited, and of whom my note-book will yet speak, are the Cherokees, 

 Ckoctaws, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws, Quapaws, Senccas, Delawares, and several 

 others, whose customs are interesting, and whose history, from their proximity to 

 and dealings with the civilized community, is one of great interest and some impor- 

 tance to the enlightened world. Adieu. — Pages 80-86, vol. 2, Catlin's Eight Years. 



MR. CATLIN'S JOURNEY ACROSS THE PLAINS FROM FORT GIBSON TO 



EOONVILLE, MO. 



[Letter from Alton, Illinois, fall of 1834.1 



A few days after the date of the (foregoing) letter, I took leave of Fort Gibson, and 

 made a transit across the prairies to this place, a distance of five hundred and fifty 

 miles (see No. 469), which I have performed entirely alone, and had the satisfaction of 

 joining my wife, whom I have found in good health, in a family of my esteemed friends, 

 with whom she had been residing during my last year of absence. 



ILLNESS OF CAPTAIN WHARTON. 



While at Fort Gibson, on my return from the Camanchees, I was quartered for a 

 month or two in a room with my fellow companion in misery, Captain Wharton, of the 

 dragoons, who had come in from the prairies in a condition very similar to mine, and 

 laid in a bed in the opposite corner of the room ; where we laid for several weeks like 

 two grim ghosts, rolling our glaring and staring eyeballs upon each other, when wo 

 were totally unable to hold converse other than that which was exchanged through 

 the expressive lauguage of our hollow and bilious, sunken eyes. 



The captain had been sent with a company of dragoons to escort the Santa F6* trad- 

 ers through the country of the Camanchees and Pawnees, and had returned from a 

 rapid and bold foray into the country, with many of his men sick and himself at- 

 tacked with the epidemic of the country. The captain is a gentleman of high and 

 noble bearing, of one of the most respected families in Philadelphia, with a fine and 

 chivalrous feeling, but with scarce physical stamina sufficient to bear him up under 

 the rough vicissitudes of his wild and arduous sort of life in this country. 



As soon as our respective surgeons had clarified our flesh and our bones with calo- 

 mel, had brought our pulses to beat calmly, our tongues to ply gently, and our 

 stomachs to digest moderately, we begin to feel pleasure exquisitely in our conva- 

 lescence, and draw amusement from mutual relations of scenes and adventures we had 

 witnessed on our several marches. The captain convalescing faster than I did, soon 

 got so as to eat (but not to digest) enormous meals, which visited back upon him the 

 renewed horrors of his disease ; and I, who had got ahead of him in strength, but not 

 in prudence, was thrown back in my turn by similar indulgence; and so we were 



