THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 493 



little and more comprehensive things that were about me. One of the first was a 

 newspaper, which I had brought from the garrison, the National Intelligencer of Wash- 

 ington, which I had read for years, but never with quite the zest and relish that 

 I now conversed over its familiar columns in this clean and sweet valley of dead 

 silence ! 



And, while reading, I thought of (and laughed at) what I had almost forgotten, the 

 sensation I produced amongst the Minatarees while on the Upper Missouri a few years 

 since, by taking from amongst my painting apparatus an old number of the New 

 York Commercial Advertiser, edited by my kind and tried friend, Colonel Stone. The 

 Minatarees thought that I was mad, when they saw me, for hours together, with 

 my eyes fixed upon its pages. They had different and various conjectures about 

 it, the most current of which was that I was looking at it to cure my sore eyes, and 

 they called it the " medicine cloth for sore eyes ! " I at length put an end to this and 

 several equally ignorant conjectures by reading passages in it, which were interpreted 

 to them, and the objects of the paper fully explained; after which it was looked 

 upon as a much greater mystery than before, and several liberal offers were made me 

 for it, which I was obliged to refuse, having already received a beautifully garnished 

 robe for it from the hands of a young son of Esculapius, who told me that if he could 

 employ a good interpreter to explain everything in it he could travel about amongst 

 the Minatarees and Mandans aud Sioux and exhibit it after I was gone, getting 

 rich with presents, and adding greatly to the list of his medicines, as it would make 

 him a great medicine man. I left with the poor fellow his painted robe and the 

 newspaper; and just before I departed I saw him unfolding it to show to some of 

 his friends, when he took from around it some eight or ten folds of birch bark and 

 deer-skins, all of which were carefully inclosed in a sack made of the skin of a pole- 

 cat, and undoubtedly destined to become, and to be called, his mystery or medicine- 

 bag. 



MR. CATLIN VISITS RIQUA'S BAND OF OSAGE-RIQUA. 



The distance from Fort Gibson to the Missouri where I struck the river is about 

 five hundred miles, and most of the way a beautiful prairie, in a wild and unculti- 

 vated state, without roads and without bridges, over a great part of which I steered 

 my course with my pocket compass, fording and swimming the streams in the best 

 manner I could, shooting prairie hens, and occasionally catching fish, which I cooked 

 for my meals, and slept upon the ground at night. On my way I visited " Riqua's 

 village " of Osages, and lodged during the night in the hospitable cabin of my old 

 friend Beatte, of whom I have often spoken heretofore, as one of the guides and 

 hunters for the dragoons on their campaign in the Camanchee country. This was the 

 most extraordinary hunter, I think, that I have ever met in all my travels. To hunt 

 was a phrase almost foreign to him, however, for when he went out with his rifle 

 it was for meat or for cattle, and he never came in without it. He never told how 

 many animals he had seen, how many he had wounded, &c, but his horse was always 

 loaded with meat, which was thrown down in camp without comment or words spoken. 

 Riqua was an early pioneer of Christianity in this country, who has devoted many 

 years of his life, with his interesting family, in endeavoring to civilize and Chris- 

 tianize these people by the force of pious and industrious examples which he has suc- 

 cessfully set them, and I think in the most judicious way, by establishing a little 

 village at some miles distance from the villages of the Osages, where he has invited 

 a considerable number of families, who have taken their residence by the side of him, 

 where they are following his virtuous examples in their dealings and modes of life 

 and in agricultural pursuits, which he is teaching them and showing them, that they 

 may raise the comforts and luxuries of life out of the ground, instead of seeking for 

 them in the precarious manner in which they naturally look for them, in the uncer- 

 tainty of the chase. 



It was a source of much regret to me that I did not see this pious man, as he was 

 on a tour to the east when I was in his little village. 



