 | O-kee-pa, a religious ceremony, and other customs of the Mandans |  |
APPENDIX.
No. I.—CERTIFICATE.
"We hereby certify that we witnessed, in company with Mr. Catlin, in the
Mandan village, the ceremony represented in the four paintings to which this
certificate refers, and that he has therein represented those scenes as we saw
them transacted, without any addition or exaggeration.
Witnessing scenes so extraordinary as those described in the foregoing
pages, and so remote from civilization, I deemed it prudent to obtain the
above certificates, which were given in the Mandan village, and inseparably
attached to the backs of my four original oil-paintings of those four days' ceremonies,
made in the Mandan village, and submitted to the examination and
approval of the chiefs and the whole tribe, and now in my possession, entirely
unchanged.
No. II.
"To George Catlin, Esq.
"Dear Sir,
I have seen your account of the religious ceremonies of the Mandans,
and no man will give you so much credit for it as myself. I conducted the
Mr. Kipp, and was the first white man who ever learned to speak the Mandan
language.
"Mr. Kipp, Mr. Crawford, and Bogard, who have given you their certificates,
are old acquaintances of mine, and I am glad you had them with you.
All those parts of the ceremonies which you describe as taking place outside of
the Medicine Lodge,—the bull dance, the dragging scene, etc., I witnessed
annually for eight years just as you have represented them, and I was every
year an invited guest to the "feast of the buffaloes," but I was always unable
to get admission into the Medicine Lodge to see that part of the tortures that
took place inside.
"Sutler to the First Regiment of Mounted Dragoons."
No. III.—DESTRUCTION OF THE MANDANS.
As to the unlucky fate of the Mandans, the following letter, enclosed to
me by my esteemed friend Thomas Potts, Esq., of Edinburgh, and now in my
possession, written by his brother, who was then a clerk in the Fur Company's
employment, is worthy of being read and distinctly understood, and will be
received as undeniable authority, as he could have no motive for misrepresentation.
"To Thomas Potts, Esq., Edinburgh, Scotland.
"Dear Brother,
" . . . . . The friendly and hospitable tribe of Mandans are nearly all
destroyed by the smallpox. There are but thirty-two families remaining, and
those chiefly women and children; these the Riccarrees, who have moved up
and taken possession, have turned out of the village, after plundering them of
everything they had on earth, and they will all be destroyed by their enemies
the Sioux, as they have no weapons to defend themselves with.
"About sixty young warriors, who had recovered from the smallpox, on
seeing how they were disfigured, put an end to their existence by stabbing or
drowning themselves. Nothing now but the name of these people remains.
"The disease was brought up by the Fur Company's steamboat in the
spring: two men on board were sick with the disease when the boat arrived
at the Mandan village, and the Mandans who went on board caught the infection,
hence the almost total destruction of the tribe.
"The Indians are much exasperated against the whites; indeed, if they
were not very forbearing, they would destroy every white man in the country,
as they have been the cause of all the distress and disease, which have
gone also to all the neighbouring tribes, and may perhaps depopulate the whole
country. . . .
No. IV.—DESTRUCTION OF THE MANDANS.
In the summer following the calamity of the Mandans, Mr. Kennith
M`Kenzie, at that time chief factor of the Fur Company, and in charge of
Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellow Stone River, came down to St. Louis
and New York, where I had an interview with him; and as he was taking
leave, to return to the Yellow Stone, passing through the Mandan village, I
placed in his hands the sum of fifty dollars, and begged him to procure and
send to me any relics of the Mandans that he might think interesting to be
preserved in my Indian Collection.
In the course of the ensuing summer I received the following letter, enclosed
in a box containing some articles procured for me, as described within
it. Mr. M`Kenzie, who was from the city of Edinburgh, had treated me with
honour and much kindness when I was visiting the Mandans and other tribes
on the Upper Missouri a few years previous, and I never believed that he had
any motive for misrepresentation in the following letter:—
"June, 1839.
"To George Catlin, Esq., City of New York.
"Dear Sir,
" . . . . . I have sent this day by our boat a box containing a few
articles of Mandan manufacture, such as I thought would be of interest to
Mandan village they have appropriated nearly everything, and it is impossible
therefore to obtain what I otherwise would have procured for you. I have
sent you, however, one thing which you will peculiarly value, — the famous
war-knife of your old friend Mah-to-toh-pa, the war chief. This knife and its
history you are familiar with.
"I have also sent a very beautiful woman's robe, with a figure of the sun
painted on it, a grizzly bear's-claw necklace, and several other articles, the best
I could obtain. . . . . . On reaching here I learn that amongst the Assiniboins
and Crees about 7000, and amongst the Blackfeet 15,000, have fallen victims
to the disease, which spread to those tribes.
"Of the Mandans between forty and fifty were all that were left when the
disease subsided. The Riccarrees soon after moved up and took possession of
their village, making slaves of the remaining Mandans, and are living in it at
the present time.
"A few months after the Riccarrees took possession they were attacked by
a war-party of Sioux, and in the middle of the battle the Mandans, men,
women, and children, whilst fighting for the Riccarrees, at a concerted signal
ran through the pickets and threw themselves under the horses' feet of the
Sioux, and, still fighting, begged the Sioux to kill them `that they might not
live to be the dogs of the Riccarrees.' The last of the tribe were here slain.
I might not have encumbered my work with the above certificates and
extracts of letters in my possession, were it not that the very Company who
have been the cause of the destruction of these people, to punish me for
having condemned their system of rum and whisky selling, and to veil
their iniquities, have endeavoured to throw discredit upon my descriptions
of the religious ceremonies of the Mandans, and to induce the world to
believe, contrary to my representations, that a large proportion of the Mandans
still exist, and are rapidly increasing under the nourishing auspices of the
Fur Company.
There is no doubt whatever that a few straggling Mandans who fled to the
Minatarrees, or in other directions, are still existing, nor any doubt but that
the Riccarrees, since the destruction of the Mandans, have occupied to this
day the Mandan village, under the range of the guns of the Fur Company's
fort, and are exhibited to the passers-by and represented to the reading world
reader who has paid attention to the foregoing certificates and extracts of
letters, added to my own testimony as an eye-witness, will have no difficulty
in drawing correct conclusions as to the peculiar customs and the cruel fate
of the Mandan Indians.
Every reader of this work will have a knowledge of, and a respect for the
names of Cass and Webster, who were familiar with my works and also with
Indian history and Indian character.
Letter from General Cass, American Ambassador to France, and since,
Secretary of State of the United States of America.
"No man can appreciate better than myself the admirable fidelity of
your Indian Collection and Indian book, which I have lately examined. They
are equally spirited and accurate; they are true to nature. Things that are,
are not sacrificed, as they too often are by the painter, to things as (in his
judgment) they should be.
"During eighteen years of my life I was superintendant of Indian affairs in
the North-west Territory of the United States, and during more than five I was
Secretary of War, to which department belongs the general control of Indian
concerns. I know the Indians thoroughly. I have spent many a month in
their camps, council-houses, villages, and hunting-grounds; I have fought with
them and against them; and I have negotiated seventeen treaties of peace or
of cession with them. I mention these circumstances to show you that I
have a good right to speak confidently upon the subject of your drawings.
Among them I recognize many of my old acquaintances, and everywhere I am
struck with the vivid representations of them and their customs, of their
peculiar features, and of their costumes. Unfortunately, they are receding
before the advancing tide of our population, and are probably destined at no
distant day wholly to disappear; but your Collection will preserve them, as far
as human art can do, and will form the most perfect monument of an extinguished
race that the world has ever seen."
"To George Catlin.
Extract from the Speech of the Hon. Daniel Webster, on a Motion in
the Senate of the United States, for the purchase of Catlin's Indian
Collection in 1849.
"Mr. President,—The question is, whether it does not become us, as a
useful thing, to possess in the United States this collection of paintings, etc.,
made amongst the Indian tribes?—whether it is not a case for the exercise of
large liberality, I will not say bounty, but policy? These tribes, Sir, that have
preceded us, to whose lands we have succeeded, and who have no written memorials
of their laws, their habits, and their manners, are all passing away to
the land of forgetfulness. Their likeness, manners, and customs, are portrayed
with more accuracy and truth in this Collection by Catlin than in all
the other drawings and representations on the face of the earth. Somebody in
this country ought to possess this Collection,—that is my opinion; and I do
not know who there is, or where there is to be found, any society or individual,
who or which can with so much propriety possess himself or itself of it as the
Government of the United States. For my part, then, I do think that the
preservation of Catlin's Indian Collection in this country is an important public
act. I think it properly belongs to those accumulations of historical matters
respecting our predecessors on this continent which it is very proper for the
Government of the United States to maintain. As I have said, this race is
going into forgetfulness; they track the continuation of mankind in the present
age, and call recollection back to them. And here they are better exhibited,
in my judgment, better set forth and presented to the mind, and the
taste and the curiosity of mankind, than in all other collections in the world. I
go for this as an American subject, as a thing belonging to us, to our history, to
the history of a race whose lands we till, and over whose obscure graves and
bones we tread every day. I look upon it as a thing more appropriate for us
than the ascertaining of the South Pole, or anything that can be discovered in
the Dead Sea or the river Jordan. These are the grounds, Sir, upon which I
propose to proceed, and I shall vote for the appropriation with great pleasure."
| O-kee-pa, a religious ceremony, and other customs of the Mandans | |