George Catlin, Painter of Indians
George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on July 26, 1796. He became interested in Indians at a very young age after hearing Indian legends. When a girl, his mother had been captured by Indians in the Wyoming Massacre of 1778. He also loved the outdoors and would rather be there than in school. He collected arrowheads and other Indian artifacts.
In 1818, he passed his bar exam and became a lawyer in Lucerne, Pennsylvania. But it didn't hold his attention. Instead he became interested in art. One day a group of ten or fifteen Indians was passing through town on their way to Washington, D.C. This rekindled his interest in Indians. He suddenly knew what his life's goal would be. He wanted to preserve their customs and their manner of dress for America. And he knew he had to go where they were to really be accurate.
In the spring of 1830 he went to St. Louis, where he met William Clark. Clark, former partner of Meriwether Lewis on their expedition to the Pacific Ocean, was now the Superintendent of Indian Affairs. That summer Catlin went with Clark on various expeditions to the Great Plains. Clark's mission was to make treaties with the Iowa, Missouri, Sioux, Omaha, Sauk, and Fox tribes. He painted many pictures of the various tribes while he was there. At the Cantonment Leavenworth he also painted pictures of the Delaware, Kaskaskia, Kickapoo, Peoria, Potawatomi, and Shawnee, who formerly lived much further east before white man came. After that he went with Clark to the Kansas River where he painted several more pictures of Indian chiefs.
A year later he was back in the wild, traveling with the American Fur Company. The traders rode the Yellowstone, the first steamboat to ply the Missouri as far north as the mouth of the Yellowstone on the border of present day Montana and North Dakota. While on the steamship he painted the scenes that he sailed by. While visiting Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone he crafted a series of paintings depicting the Sioux Indians. He also painted pictures of other Indians that were there to trade, such as the Blackfoot, Cree, and Cheyenne.
After he returned from this expedition, he started exhibited his paintings. He showed some of them at an expedition in Pittsburgh. After that he showed them in several other Midwestern towns.
In 1834, he was able to travel to Fort Gibson on the Arkansas River. From there, he traveled with a company of Dragoons on an expedition to Comanche country in southwest Oklahoma. While there he pained the Comanche, Kiowa, Waco, and Wichita Indians. Many of them depicted the superb skills that the Comanches had with horses. He was also the first to portray Indians who had been forcibly removed from their traditional lands into the new territory. He painted the Creek, Cherokee, and Choctaw, after being moved to their new lands.
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