University of Virginia Library

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TO THE READER.

Mr. Schoolcraft, in his work on the North American Indians, published
for the Congress of the United States, has endeavoured to
impeach the veracity of Mr. Catlin's description of the Mandan religious
ceremonies, first made public some years since, and here
republished.

We have always had the most implicit confidence in the truth of
Mr. Catlin, who was an eye-witness to the scenes described; and it is
therefore with no little satisfaction we submit for the reader's perusal
the following extract from a recent letter written (with the manuscript
of this work before him) by His Highness the Prince Maximilian of
Neuwied, the celebrated traveller among the North American Indians,
the original of which is now in our possession.

The unimpeachable statements contained in the letter, and the
certificates of three educated and intelligent men, who, as will be
seen in the narrative, witnessed with Mr. Catlin the whole of those
ceremonies as he has described them, added to Mr. Catlin's account,
are conclusive evidence as to the existence and character of
this ceremony before the extinction of the Mandan tribe; and, after
a perusal of the work, the reader, we think, will admit that no
ethnological fact is now better established than that of the O-kee-pa
of the Mandans.