730 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



From lb52 to 1857 I made three voyages from Paris to South and Central America. 

 In my first voyage I left Para, mouth of Amazon, on the steamer Marajo, having been 

 advised to visit the numerous Catholic missions on the Amazon and its confluents, as 

 the means of making my Indian portraits and other sketches on the shores of that 

 river. 



I visited one of these and was received and treated with kindness. I stayed nearly 

 two weeks, and, owing to their superstitions, got not one sitter. The civilized Indians 

 about these establishments did not suit me ; the time and expense I could not afford, 

 and, with unfortunate deafness (making me a tedious guest among strangers), to listen 

 to the thousand questions put to me in Spanish and Lingua Geral (neither of which 

 did I at that time understand), though kindly meant, worried me, and having an 

 English passport with an English name I could not be known in that suspicious coun- 

 try as George Catlin with a different name in my pocket. In this dilemma I returned 

 to Para and soon looked up Smyth, who had crossed the Acarai Mountains with mo 

 from British Guiana, and who had stopped in Para, with nothing as yet to do, and 

 with him I took steamer to the Barra, to Tabatinga, and Nauta. At the latter place 

 I found a Portuguese, the owner of a cupola trading boat, with whom I made an ar- 

 rangement to descend the Amazon with us to Obidos, a distance of one thousand miles, 

 giving me every opportunity of stopping in front of the various Indian villages and 

 making my sketches. The cupola enabled us three to sleep comfortably and was a 

 good atelier in which to finish up my sketches as we moved along ; and with the ex- 

 hilarating prospect before me of seeing face to face, and in their native habits and 

 expressions, ten thousand Indians and the magnificent shores of the Amazon, we 

 started off. 



The owner of the boat, a river trader, was familiar with the localities of most of the 

 tribes of the Upper Amazon, and though not speaking their languages, had a tolerable 

 facility of conversation with them by signs manual. 



With these advantages I trusted to getting my sketches as we descended the river, 

 anchoring our boat in front of their villages and encampments as we might discover 

 them. 



In the first day of our voyage we anchored in front of a small village, and the boat- 

 man, who knew the chief, invited him and his wife on board, and I made a portrait 

 of him. 



It was taken ashore and created a great excitement among the crowd, and his wife 

 agreed to be painted the next morning, and came with the chief for the purpose. I 

 asked the chief for his name to be put on the back of the portrait, but a medicine 

 man who came on board with them raised violent objections to it, alleging that if the 

 chief gave his name to be put on the back of the picture he would be a man without 

 a name and that some harm would certainly accrue to him. " This man," said he to 

 the chief, "has got your skin from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, 

 and in a little time he will have glass eyes in it. How will you feel then? how will 

 you sleep ? A few years since several such things were made at the Barra, and every 

 one who was painted, or some of their relatives, died soon after." 



At this the wife of the chief became frightened and refused to be painted, and when 

 she was told that I was going to take the chief's portrait with me she commenced 

 crying and. howling in the most piteous manner, and the affrighted crowd dispersed 

 on the shore. A bright-colored cotton shawl, however, quieted the poor woman, and 

 as we were about to start off the medicine man bawled out to us sarcastically, as he 

 turned his back upon us, the chief's name, no doubt, from his manner, and as the 

 boatman said, a fictitious one. 



We moved on and soon were in front of an encampment of some fifty or sixty, a 

 fishing party of the same tribe. We anchored at the shore, and brought the whole 

 party to the water's edge, but for no consideration that we could offer would any one 

 allow his portrait to bo painted, and we moved along again. 



