The first American whites to make close contact with the Indians of the Far West were explorers like Lewis and Clark and fur traders like Jim Bridger and William H. Ashley. Their accounts provided Easterners with information about the physiognomy, dress, language and customs of the different tribes. But it was artists who, based on their first-hand contacts with western Indians beginning in the 1830s, created the most vivid record. Foremost among them was George Catlin (1796-1872) who devoted his art to rescuing from oblivion “the looks and customs of the vanishing races of native man in America.” During a eight-year journey into the trans-Mississippi wilderness he covered the thousands of miles, came to know 48 Indian tribes and executed hundreds of portraits, landscapes, and religious, hunting and domestic scenes. A fundamental aspect of Plains Indian life was the horse. Introduced by the Spaniards in the 17th century, the horse enabled the Plains Indians to follow the migrating buffalo herds. In time, the Indians became not only expert horsemen and hunters, but as competition for the buffalo brought tribes into conflict, fierce and skillful warriors. Catlin’s artworks, like those of his contemporary Karl Bodmer, capture a sense of Indian life as it existed before the white invasion.

Tags: George Catlin, Native Americans