OPINIONS OP STATESMEN AND SCIENTIFIC MEN 



AS TO THE VALUE OF THE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY AND HIS WORK. 



FROM GENERAL LEWIS CASS. 



Paris, December 8, 1841. 



Dear Sir : No man can appreciate better than myself the admirable fidelity of your 

 drawings and book which I have lately received. They are equally spirited and ac- 

 curate ; they are true to nature. Things that are are not sacrificed, as they too often 

 are by the painter, to things as in his judgment they should be. 



During eighteen years of my life I was superintendent of Indian affairs in the 

 Northwestern Territory of the United States, and during more than five I was Secre- 

 tary of War, to which department belongs the general control of Indian concerns. I 

 know the Indians thoroughly — I have spent many a month in their camps, council- 

 houses, villages, and hunting-grounds — I have fought with them and against them — 

 and I have negotiated seventeen treaties of peace or of cession with them. I men- 

 tion these circumstances to show you that I have a good right to speak confidently 

 upon the subject of your drawings. Among them I recognize many of my old ac- 

 quaintances, and everywhere I am struck with the vivid representations of them and 

 their customs, of their peculiar features, and of their costumes. Unfortunately they 

 are receding before the advancing tide of our population, and are probably destined, 

 at no distant day, wholly to disappear; but your collection will preserve them, as 

 far as human art can do, and will form the most perfect monument of an extinguished 

 race that the world has ever seen. 



Lewis Cass. 



To George Catlin. 



JOHN HALDANE, THE TRAVELER. 



Cottage, Haddington, April 15, 1843. 

 Dear Sir : I have enjoyed much pleasure in attending your lectures at the Water- 

 loo Rooms in Edinburgh. Your delineations of the Indian character, the display of 

 beautiful costumes, and the native Indian manners, true to the life, realized to my mind 

 and view scenes I had so often witnessed in the parts of the Indian countries where 

 I had been, and for twenty years' peregrinations in those parts, from Montreal to the 

 Great Slave River north, and from the shores of the Atlantic, crossing the Rocky 

 Mountains, to the mouth of the Columbia River, on the Pacific Ocean, west, I had op- 

 portunities of seeing much. Your lectures and exhibition have afforded me great 

 pleasure and satisfaction, and I shall wish you all that success which you so emi- 

 nently deserve for the rich treat which you have afforded in our enlightened, liter- 

 ary, and scientific metropolis. 



I remain, dear sir, yours, very truly, 



John Haldane. 

 To George Catlin, Esq. 



HENRY T. TUCKERMAN'S OPINION. 



In the year 1847, Henry T. Tuckerman, who had frequently seen Mr. 

 Catlin's gallery, in his "Artist Life" thus speaks of it: 



Here was a result of art, not drawn merely from academic practice or the lonely 

 vigils of a studio, but gathered amid the freedom of nature. Here were trophies as 

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