University of Virginia Library

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CATLIN'S
NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN PORTFOLIO.

PLATE No 1.

GROUP OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, FROM LIFE.

By whatever means, at what time soever, or for what end, Man and ferocious Beasts have been placed upon the almost boundless prairies, and through the rude and Rocky
Mountains of America: and for what wise purposes soever the dates and sources of their origin have been sealed in impenetrable mystery; it is a truth incontrovertible, that such
were found to be the joint inhabitants of all that important half of the globe; and a truth rendered of tenfold interest at the present time, from the lamentable fact that both
are rapidly travelling to extinction before the destructive waves of civilisation, which seem destined soon to roll over the remotest parts of the continent.

Of these joint and original inhabitants, one-half at least of North America has been already entirely depopulated; and of Man, who falls by poisons and diseases not imbibed
by the brute creation, millions have already sunk under dissipation and disease, which have been carried by civilized men over the other half, and thinned their ranks to the numbers
which I have estimated in my former work, to which I have alluded in the preamble to this.

Man, in the vast plains and mountains of America, has been found, as in other parts of the world, maintaining his ascendency over all the beasts of the forest, by the aid
of his reason and invention, which have enabled him to construct his weapons, and to employ the means to convert the various animals to his aid and his subsistence in the
numerous modes represented in the following pages.

The group in Plate No. 1 is composed of three Portraits from my Collection, representing three different tribes, of various latitudes, and well illustrating a number of the
leading characteristics of this interesting part of the human family.

An Osage Warrior, from a southern latitude, entirely primitive in his habits and dress; his head shaved, and ornamented with the graceful crest manufactured from the hair
of the deer's tail and horsehair (a uniform custom of the tribe); his robe of the buffalo's hide, with the battles of his life emblazoned on it; his necklace made of the claws of
the grizzly bear; his bow and quiver slung upon his back; and his leggins fringed with scalp-locks taken as trophies from the heads of enemies slain by him in battle.

An Iroquois (an almost extinguished tribe), from a northern climate, with long hair; with a ring in his nose, and head-dress of quills and feathers, according to the mode of
his tribe; with his tomahawk in hand, and his dress mostly of civilized manufacture, indicating an approach to civilisation, to which all the remnants of this and several other contiguous
tribes have long since attained.

A Pawnee Woman, from an intermediate latitude, in primitive dress, made entirely of skins; and in this, as well as in the mode of dressing the head and ornamenting the
person, a very fair illustration of the general modes and personal appearance of the females, who exhibit much less forcibly than the men, the characteristic differences of the various
tribes.

Two millions or more of these reasoning beings are still existing in North America, strangely mixed up with, and holding dominion over, the beasts of the forest, upon the
flesh of which they chiefly subsist, obtaining it by the various exciting means of appropriation to which I am now to introduce the reader in the following illustrations.