Jessica Crabtree

July 26, 1796: Birth of painter George Catlin

George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, into the large family of a Revolutionary War veteran. His mother’s and grandmother’s accounts of their experiences as Indian captives may have sparked his early fascination with Native Americans that later became a lifelong passion. As a young man he abandoned a law career to accompany expeditions researching and documenting indigenous peoples throughout North and South America.

During the 1830s, he traveled extensively through the Midwest and the Great Plains, where he spent weeks and months at a time among the Indian nations of the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys – becoming one of the first Europeans to do so. The notes and drawings he compiled during this tour formed the basis of his collection of documentary paintings, which he later published in a two-volume work entitled Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. He amassed a huge collection of artifacts and kept a detailed record of the customs and appearances of the Native American peoples he encountered. His total output consisted of more than 600 original paintings and over 700 drawings and sketches, making him one of the premier painters of Native Americana.

Catlin attempted unsuccessfully to sell his portfolio to the United States government as a public historical exhibit; eventually he sold his original works to a private collector. He spent much of his later career traveling, writing memoirs, and marketing his work in European tours. He died in New Jersey in 1872; his works were later donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

About His Work

George Catlin is certainly not a painter who became famous solely on account of his artistic skills. In technical terms, his works range from mediocre to downright primitive, as some critics have labeled it. What drove his career was an almost obsessive desire to portray Native Americans from across the continent in the most original setting possible.

Like Edward Curtis, he felt compelled to portray the appearance and customs of peoples whom he felt were a “vanishing race.” In some cases, this proved to be fateful; for example, his extensive work among the Mandan barely preceded a smallpox epidemic that reduced their number to a mere handful. As a result, Catlin’s depictions of the Mandan are valuable today because no artist after him was able to produce such a successful pictorial record of them.

Above: The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas; Below: Mandan Buffalo Dance

There is much controversy over the duplicity in Catlin’s portrayals of Indians. On one hand, his genuine appreciation of Native Americans fueled his eagerness to preserve their cultural record; on the other, he stooped to using white models in Indian apparel for some paintings, and staging performing acts similar to later wild west shows as part of his marketing scheme. Both of these contributed to spreading and reinforcing damaging stereotypes that are still prevalent today.

Right: Sha-kó-ka (“Mint”), a Mandan girl (1832)

The fact remains that his personal mentality in regards to American Indians was far ahead of his time. Whatever his motives in promoting his own work, and his means for marketing it, his profound respect for the cultures he encountered was remarkable, and would have still been uncommon a generation or more ahead of his time.

His confidence in the character of Indian society as a whole was boundless. “The very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied,” Catlin asserted. Towards the end of his career, he remarked, “No Indian ever betrayed me, struck me with a blow, or stole from me a shilling’s worth of my property.” And this at a time when Indians were still perceived largely as inferior humans predisposed toward aggression and brutality. (continue reading…)