On the painter & showman George Catlin, documentarist of the now quite lost 19th century Native America, & appended with a small gallery of the artist's work...

So, if you've followed along thus far then you know too well that I've been reading an abridged edition of The Journals of Lewis and Clark; and it has proved very satisfactory to present here many of the interesting details recorded within its pages.  Of course this is often accompanied by much of my sometimes lighthearted, sometimes very earnest commentary, and so I mean this very much in the latter sense when I add that I hope you enjoy it all as much as I do...

One thing I find especially compelling about the journals is that they open an incredible window into a world that no longer exists, but once truly did; a world then as now quite alien.  In penning and posting these essays, I find myself turning again and again to the paintings of George Catlin for their illustration.  He's a natural (and I think equally fascinating) choice for the task:  like Lewis and Clark, his work is also primarily documentary in nature and it, too, offers a glimpse into a world that has long since disappeared.  And furthermore it was Catlin's prescient sense of its impermanence that spurred the artist to document Native America in what has become one of our most exceptional, expansive bodies of American painting.

Catlin's work is particularly apropos to the endeavors of Lewis and Clark since so much of it was painted not too long after the expedition's original journey, the documentation produced by the two parties often overlaps the same tribal cultures, and Catlin himself even accompanied the later-career William Clark in a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi river in 1830.  I think he's apropos to Amicus Curiositatis, too - specifically because he was not just a painter but also played the roles of collector, curator, and showman; Coupling his paintings with an equally impressive array of indigenous artifacts (and even live indigenous peoples themselves), he created a sort of traveling cabinet of curiosities that toured the United States and continued to even greater reception in Europe.   George Catlin was, in fact, himself an amicus curiositatis, and an amicus rerum mirabilium to boot...

Portrait of No-ho-mun-ya, or "One Who Gives No Attention" -  Iowa tribe, 1844
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

No-ho-mun-ya accompanied Catlin to Europe and died in Liverpool before the exhibition departed for Paris.

So then you see, I think he's a good match all around - as both illustrator and subject as well.  And as I wind down the meditations on Lewis and Clark,  I want to share more of his terrific paintings and think, too, that a short biography of the painter is in order:

George Catlin was born in Pennsylvania in 1796, where his interest in Native Americana was piqued in childhood from, among other things, listening to his mother's tales of her own frontier childhood and capture by Indians.   Later Catlin studied law and apparently never actually received much formal art training; but at some point in his early adulthood he was struck with a sense of the impermanence of the Native American - as they looked and lived and were then, which is to say their existence as an unaffected, autonomous culture - and in a stunningly life-changing move, he left law and headed to the western frontier.  

Catlin took it upon himself to document the appearance, style, and presence of the Native American.  In 1830 he accompanied Clark up the Mississippi and soon after made then-frontiersy St. Louis his base for subsequent artistic expeditions along the rivers and into the lands of numerous indigenous tribes - including many that we encounter in the Lewis & Clark journals, such as the Mandan, the Hidatsa, the Blackfeet, and so forth.  The result of his artistic output during the 1830s was a stunning collection of six hundred plus paintings that read today like bright Polaroids of a past mostly gone to shadow.

George Catlin not only collected painted imagery but also the artifacts and handicrafts of the Native American tribal civilizations among whom he traveled and worked.  In the 1840s, he amassed together both paintings and artifacts and took his "Indian Gallery" back east.  The exhibition was supplemented with Catlin's own lectures and even the presence of actual Native Americans themselves.  It is often noted that the paintings were hung in salon style, which is to say the walls were fairly paved with canvases - hung closely next to one another, above one another, and so forth.  Definitely a far cry from the style of today, where museums bewilderingly seem to pride themselves on how little of their collection is actually on display.

"Ah-móu-a, The Whale, One of Kee-o-kúk's Principal Braves" Sac and Fox tribe, 1835
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Catlin's Indian Gallery never proved as profitable as he had hoped.  Eventually he packed up the collection - live Indians and all - and headed for a tour of Europe, where by default appetites for the curiosities of  Native America were significantly less-sated.  The poet Charles Baudelaire wrote upon seeing the exhibition in Paris: "M. Catlin has captured the proud, free character and noble expression of these splendid fellows in a masterly way......"   Though I think it should also be noted that at this time, in the interest of further enhancing the expensive-to-maintain production, Catlin took to dressing Caucasians in American Indian costume and presented them in various tableau vivant-style vignettes.  So really, I'm not sure that anyone today (or then) is exactly sure what they hell they were looking at, in Paris, in the 1840s.  But pretty exotic entertainment in a world before television and internet, one has to admit!

Financial troubles persisted, and though he had tried consistently but unsuccessfully to sell his collection en masse to the United States government, eventually Catlin was forced to sell his 607 paintings to private hands.  They were purchased in 1852 by the wealthy industrialist Joseph Harrison, who unfortunately kept them not on public display but stored away in a factory.  However, the collection remained more or less in tact.

Besides this initial body of work from the 1830's, Catlin produced other collections, such as an extensive series of engravings for the 1841 publication of his Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, as well as two other subsequent publications.  Additionally there is also what is known as his "cartoon collection": produced after relinquishing the initial bulk of paintings to Harrison, Catlin set out to recreate them - working not from life as with the originals but from preparatory sketches and outlines done for his work in the 1830s.  Today the nearly complete collection of original paintings is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York also holds 700 of Catlin's sketches.  His work is in the collections of several other museums and enjoyed by many.  As the website for Gilrcrease Museum - home to an extensive American Indian and Western art collection in Tulsa, Oklahoma, notes:  "Indians loved him.  Catlin's authentic portraits and depictions of the natives' culture and lifestyle are enlightening and fun..."



"Comanche Village, Women Dressing Robes and Drying Meat" 1834–35

From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum

So really, I think there is something rather inspiring about this individual.  He left behind what would have undoubtedly have been a very comfortable, conventional career in law and struck out - talented but basically untrained - into what was otherwise an unknown, unprescribed life.  And much of it was lived beyond the borders of what was then considered civilized.  He had an idea and an urge - to see and to capture -and in following those inner impulses throughout his life, he had by his death in 1872 created what was to become a stellar and essentially priceless assemblage of historical and ethnographic knowledge, much beloved and relied upon by many generations since. (Wow!) And you know, through both prosperous times and difficult, he made the most of what he had to work with and, from what I can see, stayed on the path: stayed true to himself and his vision.  So there is probably something we all can learn from this George Catlin.

- a.t.s.

 So, all of that said, let's look at some paintings...

"Wash-ka-mon-ya, Fast Dancer, a Warrior"  Iowa tribe, 1843
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

"Náh-se-ús-kuk, Whirling Thunder, Eldest Son of Black Hawk"  Sac and Fox tribe, 1832
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

 

"Bird's-eye View of the Mandan Village, 1800 Miles above St. Louis" Mandan/Numakiki tribe,  1837–39
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

It is interesting to note that the Lewis & Clark expedition spent its first winter camped among the Mandans who lived (or at least wintered) on the Missouri river.  I imagine their architecture wouldn't have changed much in the following 30 or so years, so it's a fair assumption to say this is what the explorers themselves saw daily.

"Back View of Mandan Village, Showing the Cemetery"  Mandan/Numakiki tribe, 1832
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Mandan did not bury their dead but left the bodies to decompose on raised scaffolding.  Once they are clean and sun-bleached, the skulls were arranged in large, geometric circles.

Eeh-nís-kim, Crystal Stone, Wife of the Chief,  Blackfoot/Kainai tribe 1832
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

When Lewis & Clark passed back through in 1806 other tribes had warned them that the Blackfeet were the terror of the neighborhood, and indeed their passage was not without incident.  Looks like they chilled out a little in the interim.  Although I have never been a big fan of the name Crystal, I can handle it on her.

 "Buffalo Bulls Fighting in Running Season, Upper Missouri" 1837–39
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Apparently during this season literally thousands of buffalo congregated together.  The buffalo are today an occasional, ornamental novelty and this land is probably an under-occupied subdivision thrown up during the housing bubble...

 

"The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas"  1844-45

 From the National Gallery of Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

This Catlin portrait was made into a postage stamp in 1998.

"Bull Dance, Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony"  Mandan/Numakiki tribe,1832
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

"La-dóo-ke-a, Buffalo Bull, a Grand Pawnee Warrior"  Pawnee tribe, 1832
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

"Wi-jún-jon, Pigeon's Egg Head (The Light), Going to and Returning from Washington" 

Assiniboine/Nakoda tribe, 1837-39

From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Going, going....  Wi-jún-jon went to meet then President Andrew Jackson and spent 18 months in the United States.  Upon his return home he was filled with, writes the Smithsonian and quoting Catlin, "astonishing accounts of the white man’s cities. They eventually rejected his stories as 'ingenious fabrication of novelty and wonder,' and his persistence in telling such 'lies' eventually led to his murder."   Poor Wi-jún-jon didn't fare too well either in this portrait.

"Cú-sick, Son of the Chief"  Tuscarora tribe, circa 1837–39
From the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

...and Gone.  Cú-sick has been educated in the U.S. and is now both a Baptist preacher and, according to Catlin, "a very eloquent speaker."

(I am indebted to the Smithsonian American Art Museum for the better part of these images.  To further explore their much more extensive collection, and I highly recommend it, check out  "Campfire Stories with George Catlin : Encounters of Two Cultures" .  Additionally, Wikipedia was consulted in the construction of this essay.)