THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 717 



gave out, saying, " Oh, if I was down in the valley of the Amazon I could 

 walk off this weakness." The confinement was irksome, because he had 

 been a child of nature, basking in her smiles and sunshine, and toying 

 with her darker moods. 



Even after 1870 Mr. Oatlin had a lingering hope that his collections, 

 the original and the cartoon, would be purchased by the nation and be 

 placed in a gallery at Washington. 



Mr. Phillips, an English- gentleman, at one time offered to purchase 

 them for his gallery in England, but Mr. Catlin preferred that they 

 should remain in the United States. 



While in his last sickness his anxiety was to know what would be- 

 come of his gallery. He constantly referred to it, and almost the last 

 words he spoke were, " What will become of my gallery? n 



Mr. Catlin died at half-past 5 o'clock on the morning of December 23, 

 1872, at his rooms in the Darcy building, Jersey City, N. J., in the sev- 

 enty-seventh year of his age. On December 26 he was buried in Green- 

 wood Cemetery, Long Island, by the side of his wife and child. 



This memoir of George Catlin gives the main incidents of his adventu- 

 rous life and endeavors to connectedly present his traits of character, 

 methods of work, and the results. 



Mr. Catlin was personally a modest man. 



No man of his station or who had done so much left so little from 

 which to give a correct account of his private life. His published vol- 

 umes contain but few dates, and no matter entirely personal to him of 

 moment. Nowhere does he give the date of his birth, and furnishes no 

 clew to the history of his family. The absence of dates in the "Eight 

 Years amongst the Indians n is a cause of regret, and -has made the 

 work of preparing a correct itinerary of his journeyings very difficult. 

 His original pictures contain no dates, but the copies of some of them 

 in the collection known as the Cartoon Collection, in 1871 (Catalogue of 

 1871), and exhibited in the Stuyvesant building, New York, in 1871, con- 

 tain some dates. He seems to have cared but little about preserving 

 any data of himself. His work was to be enough ; the man Catlin was 

 constantly sunk in the working out of the one ambition of his life. No 

 attempt has been made to fully state the value of his work, and in this 

 it is feared that scant justice has been done to so earnest a man. 



His best memoir is his work and the gallery which is herein de- 

 scribed, the value of which must increase with time. 



Mr. Catlin began his travels and observations at a time when inces- 

 sant toil and hardship awaited him, and with no profitable pecuniary 

 results to follow success. He ended his journey of life after the cen 



