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Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa – Mandan, 1861 - 1869. George Catlin 1796 - 1872. Catlin Painting the Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa—Mandan, 1861/1869. “There is occasionally a chief or warrior of such extraordinary renown, that he is allowed to wear horns on his head-dress.…
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Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa –Mandan, 1861 - 1869 George Catlin 1796 - 1872
Catlin Painting the Portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa—Mandan, 1861/1869 • “There is occasionally a chief or warrior of such extraordinary renown, that he is allowed to wear horns on his head-dress.… • The reader will see this custom exemplified in the portrait of Mah-to-toh-pa…. [He is] the only man in the nation who was allowed to wear the horns.”
So wrote George Catlin in Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians, begun during the artist’s two-thousand mile journey along the upper Missouri River to what is now North Dakota.
It was the first of three self-financed trips between 1832 and 1836 that Catlin undertook in order to capture what he rightly believed to be the final and most thorough visual record of the indigenous cultures of the frontier.
1830 • Just two years earlier, the Indian Resettlement Act, designed to send Eastern Woodlands tribes inland in order to “save” them from the steady encroachment of white civilization, had passed Congress.
George Catlin agreed with the resettlement policy. • In his practical (yet sentimental) values, he was representative of the Jacksonian era, in which the United States, finally in control of the wilderness, felt a wave of nostalgia for what it was about to lose.
George Catlin was born on July 26, 1796, in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. • His father, a retired lawyer, sent George to Connecticut to study law in 1817. • Two years later he began practicing law in Wilkes-Barre.
But he was more interested in painting, natural history, and Native Americans and by 1821 had taught himself portrait painting. • He may have received instruction in painting from Charles Wilson Peale and possibly Thomas Sully. • In 1823 he painted miniatures in Philadelphia, and on seeing a delegation of Native Americans from the Far West, he determined to become their historian.
In 1828, according to the artist, an encounter with a delegation of Winnebago on their way to Washington changed the course of his career.
Claiming his interest in America's 'vanishing race' was sparked by a visiting American Indian delegation in Philadelphia, he set out to record the appearance and customs of America's native people.
He went to Albany, N.Y., to paint a portrait of Governor DeWitt Clinton, who later assisted Catlin in many ways. • A frequent guest at the governor's mansion, Catlin met there Clara Bartlett Gregory, whom he married in 1828.
Specializing in portraiture, Catlin was attracted to the American Indian as a subject after observing a delegation of chiefs at Peale's museum in Philadelphia. • He produced his first Indian portrait when he painted the likeness of Seneca orator Red Jacket at Buffalo, New York, in 1826. • During the next 4 years he divided his time between commissioned portraits and studies of Native Americans.
Seneca orator Red Jacket at Buffalo, New York Medal was given to Him by George Washington. Painting by Charles Bird King c. 1828
Finally he gave up his lucrative career as a portraitist and in 1830 went to St. Louis to study and depict Native Americans before they were changed by civilization. • St. Louis became Catlin’s base of operations for five trips he took between 1830 and 1836, eventually visiting fifty tribes. • After 7 years of hard work under very difficult circumstances, he fulfilled his ambition.
For the first 2 years he painted portraits of tribal delegates who came to St. Louis to talk with Gen. William Clark, governor of the vast Indian Territory (a close friend of the artist). • He began his journey in 1830 when he accompanied Gen. William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi River into Native American territory.
In 1832 he ascended the Missouri River by steamboat as far as Fort Union, in present North Dakota. • He spent several weeks among indigenous people still relatively untouched by European civilization.
In 1832 he traveled 2,000 miles up the Missouri River by steamboat, later making a trip to Texas and also to the upper Mississippi River. • During these trips he worked at a frantic pace, so that he had about 500 portraits and sketches, a superb collection of Naive American artifacts, and notes and impressions of 38 different tribes to be used later in his lectures and books.
Two years later he visited Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, at that time the administrative center of a large area that had been set aside for the relocation of displaced tribes from the United States. • Indigenous groups such as the Osage, Kiowa, and Comanche opposed the government's resettlement policy, and Col. Henry Dodge was sent out to establish peace between contending parties.
In the summer of 1834, the Dodge-Leavenworth Expedition traveled from Fort Gibson to the Wichita Mountains, in present southwestern Oklahoma, to treat with tribes in that area. • Catlin accompanied the dragoons. His views of the region and its people, later widely exhibited and published, were the first to be obtained by any artist.
There, at the edge of the frontier, he produced the most vivid and penetrating portraits of his career. • Later trips along the Arkansas, Red and Mississippi rivers as well as visits to Florida and the Great Lakes resulted in over 500 paintings and a substantial collection of artifacts.
Catlin had early exhibitions of his work in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Buffalo. • In 1836 he moved this material hometo Albany, where he finished paintings and made additional ones from field sketches. • He planned to hold an exhibition and lecture in New York and other big eastern citiesand then take his unique collection to Washington, where he hoped it would become the nucleus of a great national museum financed by the U.S. government.
Crow Lodge of Twenty-five Buffalo Skins, 1832-33, Crow/Apsaalooke,
In New York City, "Catlin's Indian Gallery" in 1837 was a tremendous success. • This was the first "Wild West" show - one of the most long-lasting and popular interests America was to experience. • Catlin's message of the noble Native American corrupted by the white man disturbed many people.
Although he used all his intellect and charm on influential friends in Washington, Congress did not purchase his collection, which he exhibited in the capital in 1838. • To his disappointment his Indian Gallery had little success in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, or in its second showing in New York.
In 1839 he took his gallery to London, where he again met with financial success. • Anticipating the Wild West shows of a later date, Catlin's exhibit featured lectures and demonstrations of American Indian hunting, war, and weaponry, displays of artifacts collected during his travels in the West, and • Live performances by "Native Dancers from the Wilds of America. • His wife and two daughters joined him in London.
In 1841 he published his first book on Native Americans in North America, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians (2 vols., 1841) • He published his second book, North American Indian Portfolio (1844).
In 1845 he took his show to Paris, but the revolution of 1848 (The French Revolution) forced him to return to London, where he opened yet another exhibit and published Eight Years' Travel and Residence in Europe (2 vols., 1848). • While touring abroad, Catlin's wife and son both died, leaving him three daughters, whom he entrusted to the care of a brother-in-law in New York.
