THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 769 



eloquent of adventure as of skill, environed with the most national associations, and 

 memorials of a race fast dwindling from the earth. With what interest would after 

 generations look upon these portraits, and how attractive to European eyes would be 

 such authentic "counterfeit presentments" of a savage people, about whose history 

 romance and tradition alike throw their spells. 



CAPTAIN MARKYAT, C. B. 



Captain Marryat, while visiting America in 1838, visited Mr. Catlin's 

 gallery, then at Philadelphia. While at Fort Snelling, in 1838, he at- 

 tempted to purchase an Indian dress from a Chippewa Indian, remark- 

 ing in his diary in America that— 



I was the more anxious about it [buying it] as I had seen Mr. Catlin's splendid ex- 

 hibition, and I knew that he had not one in his possession. 



MR. GEORGE COMBE, 1838. 



Mr. George Combe, in his "Notes on the United States of North 

 America, * * * n in 1838-'40, vol. 1, page 16, speaks of a visit to Mr. 

 Catlin's Indian Gallery. Mr. Catlin was exhibiting it at that time in 

 Faneuil Hall, Boston : 



October 16 (1838), Mr. Catlin's Indian Gallery. — To-day we visited Mr. Catlin's Indian 

 Gallery, in Faneuil Hall. * * * The great hall in which the Indian curiosities 

 are exhibited is 76 feet square and 28 feet high. Mr. Catlin has resided for several 

 years among the native Indians settled west of the Mississippi, on the Missouri, and 

 in other districts. He painted portraits of the men and women on the spot as he saw 

 them ; painted their country in numerous landscapes ; represented their dances, su- 

 perstitions, ceremonies, and hunting parties, and also their villages and tents; in 

 short, their actions and modes of life. He has purchased one of their tents, composed 

 of the skins of buffalos ingeniously dressed and ornamented ; their garments, orna- 

 ments, arms, and articles of luxury and amusement ; and he exhibits the whole in 

 this large gallery. He describes them also in lectures in a very interesting manner. 

 He admires the Indians, and speaks of their high qualities, and of the cruel injustice 

 with which they have been treated by the Americans. His representations and de- 

 scriptions of their country, and especially of their boundless prairies, covered with 

 the richest green turf and diversified with hills, named (by him.) the American bluffs, 

 varying in height from one hundred to seven or eight hundred feet, make one long to 

 visit them. Yet, the horrible scenes of cruelty and superstitions which he has repre- 

 sented contrast strangely with the virtues which he ascribes to them. The pictures, 

 as works of art, are deficient in drawing, perspective, and finish; but they convey a 

 vivid impression of the objects, and impress the mind of the spectator with a convic- 

 tion of their fidelity to nature which gives them an inexpressible charm. In the por- 

 traits, a few of the men are represented with tolerably good intellectual organs and 

 some of the women with a fair average development of the moral organs. The best 

 Mr. Catlin suspected to be half-breeds, but the great mass of pure Indians present 

 the deficient anterior lobe, the deficient coronal region, and the predominating base 

 of the brain, by which savages in general are characterized. 



HON. DANIEL WEBSTER. 



In the Senate of the United States, 1849, on advocating the passage 

 of the bill for the purchase of the Catlin collection (the one now in the 

 National Museum), Mr. Webster said: 



Mr. President, the question is whether it does not become us as an useful thing to 

 possess in the United States this collection of paintings, &c, made amongst the In- 

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