Volume 1

Letters and notes on the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians. Written during eight years' travel amongst the wildest tribes of Indians in North America, in 1832,33,34,35,36,37,38,and 39. With four hundred illustrations, carefully engraved from his original paintings / [George Catlin].

  • Catlin, George, 1796-1872.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters and notes on the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians. Written during eight years' travel amongst the wildest tribes of Indians in North America, in 1832,33,34,35,36,37,38,and 39. With four hundred illustrations, carefully engraved from his original paintings / [George Catlin]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    130/434 (page 74)
    frequently would produce us, from one blow, the eighth part of a bushel of this fruit; when the boughs relieved of their burden, instantly flew up to their native position. Of this beautiful native, which I think would form one of the loveliest ornamental shrubs for a gentleman’s park or pleasure grounds, I procured a number of the roots; but which, from the many accidents and incidents that our unlucky bark was subjected to on our rough passage, I lost them (and almost the recollection of them) as well as many other curiosities I had col- lected on our way down the river. On the morning of the next day, and not long after we had stopped and taken our breakfast, and while our canoe was swiftly gliding along under the shore of a beautiful prairie, I saw in the grass, on the bank above me, what I supposed to be the back of a fine elk, busy at his grazing. I let our craft float silently by for a little distance, when I communicated the intelligence to my men, and slily ran in, to the shore. I pricked the priming of my fire- lock, and taking a bullet or two in my mouth, stepped ashore, and trailmg my rifle in my hand, went back under the bank, carefully crawling up in a little ravine, quite sure of my game; when, to my utter surprise and violent — alarm, I found the elk to be no more nor less than an Indian pony, getting his breakfast! and a little beyond him, a number of others grazing; and nearer to me, on the left, a war-party reclining around a little fire; and yet nearer, and within twenty paces of the muzzle of my gun, the naked shoulders of a brawny Indian, who seemed busily engaged in cleaning his gun, From ~ this critical dilemma, the reader can easily imagine that I vanished with all the suddenness and secrecy that was possible, bending my course towards my canoe. Bogard and Ba‘tiste correctly construing the expression of my face, and the agitation of my hurried retreat, prematurely unmoored from the shore; and the force of the current carrying them around a huge pile of drift wood, threw me back for some distance upon my own resources ; though they finally got in, near the shore, and I into the boat, with the steering oar in my hand; when we plied our sinews with effect and in silence, till we were wafted far from the ground which we deemed critical and dangerous to our lives; for we had been daily in dread of meeting a war-party of the revengeful Riccarees, which we had been told was on the river, in search of the Mandans. From and after this exciting occurrence, the entries in my journal for the rest of the voyage to the village of the Mandans, were as follow :— . Saturday, fifth day of our voyage from the mouth of Yellow Stone, at eleven o’clock.—Landed our canoe in the Grand Détour (or Big Bend) as it is called, at the base of a stately clay mound, and ascended, all hands, to the summit level, to take a glance at the picturesque and magnificent works — of Nature that were about us. Spent the remainder of the day in painting © a view of this grand scene; for which purpose Ba‘tiste and Bogard carried — my easel and canvass to the top of a huge mound, where they left me at my —