George Catlin

“ The bark canoe of the Chippeways is, perhaps, the most beautiful and light model of all the water crafts that ever were invented. They are generally made complete with the rind of one birch tree, and so ingeniously shaped and sewed together, with roots of the tamarack, which they call wat-tap, that they are water-tight, and ride upon the water, as light as a cork. They gracefully lean and dodge about, under the skilful balance of an Indian, or the ugliest squaw; but like everything wild, are timid and treacherous under the guidance of white man ”

“ As far west as the banks of the Mississippi, the great wave of emigration has rolled on, and already in its rear the valley is sprinkled with towns and cities, with their thousand spires pointing to the skies. For several hundred miles West, also, have the daring pioneers ventured their lives and fortunes, with their families, testing the means and luxuries of life, which Nature has spread before them; in the country where the buried tomahawk is scarce rusted, and the war-cry has scarcely died on the winds. ”

“ How weak is such an objection to him who has ascended the Upper Mississippi to the Fall of St. Anthony, traversed the States of Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan, and territory of Ouisconsin; over all of which nature has spread her green fields, smiling and tempting man to ornament with painted house and fence, with prancing steed and tasseled carriage—with countless villages, silvered spires and domes, denoting march of intellect and wealth’s refinement. ”

“ If the great family of North American Indians were all dying by a scourge or epidemic of the country, it would be natural, and a virtue, to weep for them; but merely to sympathize with them (and but partially to do that) when they are dying at our hands, and rendering their glebe to our possession, would be to subvert the simplest law of Nature, and turn civilized man, with all his boasted virtues, back to worse than savage barbarism. ”

“ Our people all believe that the spirit lives in a future state—that it has a great distance to travel after death towards the West—that it has to cross a dreadful deep and rapid stream, which is hemmed in on both sides by high and rugged hills—over this stream, from hill to hill, there lies a long and slippery pine-log, with the bark peeled off, over which the dead have to pass to the delightful hunting-grounds. ”

“ The singular character of this majestic mound, continues on the West side, in its descent toward the Missouri. There is not a tree or bush to be seen from the highest summit of the ridge, though the eye may range East and West, almost to a boundless extent, over a surface covered with a short grass, that is green at one’s feet, and about him, but changing to blue in distance, like nothing but the blue and vastness of the ocean. ”

“ These curious subjects have so often fallen under my eye while on the Upper Missouri, that with me, they have lost their novelty in a great degree; but they have amused and astonished my friend Chadwick so much, that he declares he will take every one he can pick up, and make a sensation with them when he gets home. In this way Joe’s fancy for horned frogs has grown into a sort of frog-mania, and his eyes are strained all day, and gazing amongst the grass and pebbles as he rides along, for his precious little prizes, which he occasionally picks up and consigns to his pockets. ”

“ Such is the great valley of the Mississippi and Missouri, over almost every part of which I have extended my travels, and of which and of its future wealth and improvements, I have had sublime contemplations.
I have viewed man in the artless and innocent simplicity of nature, in the full enjoyment of the luxuries which God had bestowed upon him. I have seen him happier than kings or princes can be; with his pipe and little ones about him. ”

“ I was singularly struck with the noble efforts of this champion of the mere remnant of a poisoned race, so strenuously labouring to rescue the remainder of his people from the deadly bane that has been brought amongst them by enlightened Christians. How far the efforts of this zealous man have succeeded in christianizing, I cannot tell, but it is quite certain that his exemplary and constant endeavours have completely abolished the practice of drinking whiskey in his tribe; which alone is a very praiseworthy achievement, and the first and indispensable step towards all other improvements. ”

“ I lingered along the shores of this magnificent river then, in my fragile bark, to Prairie du Chien—Dubuque—Galena, to Rock Island, and lastly to this place.
During such a Tour between the almost endless banks, carpeted with green, with one of the richest countries in the world, extending back in every direction, the mind of a contemplative man is continually building for posterity splendid seats, cities, towers and villas, which a few years of rolling time will bring about, with new institutions, new states, and almost empires ”

“ There is scarcely a finer country on earth than that now owned by the Creeks; and in North America, certainly no Indian tribe more advanced in the arts and agriculture than they are. It is no uncommon thing to see a Creek with twenty or thirty slaves at work on his plantation, having brought them from a slave-holding country, from which, in their long journey, and exposure to white man’s ingenuity, I venture to say, that most of them got rid of one-half of them, whilst on their long and disastrous crusade. ”

“ In this wise is this fair land filling up, one hundred miles or more West of the Mississippi—not with barbarians, but with people from the East, enlightened and intelligent—with industry and perseverance that will soon reap from the soil all the luxuries, and add to the surface, all the taste and comforts of Eastern refinement.
The Treaty itself, in all its forms, was a scene of interest, and Kee-o-kuk was the principal speaker on the occasion, being recognized as the head chief of the tribe. He is a very subtle and dignified man, and well fitted to wield the destinies of his nation. ”

“ After her boasts were done, and the presents secured as before, she deliberately threw off the pantaloons and coat, and presented herself at once, and to their great astonishment and confusion, in a beautiful woman’s dress. The tact with which she performed these parts, so uniformly pleased, that it drew forth thundering applause from the Indians, as well as from the spectators; and the chief stepped up and crowned her head with a beautiful plume of the eagle’s quill, rising from a crest of the swan’s down. ”

“ The prairies burning form some of the most beautiful scenes that are to be witnessed in this country, and also some of the most sublime. Every acre of these vast prairies (being covered for hundreds and hundreds of miles, with a crop of grass, which dies and dries in the fall) burns over during the fall or early in the spring, leaving the ground of a black and doleful colour. ”

“ For the convalescent, rising and escaping from the gloom and horrors of a sick bed, astride of his strong and trembling horse, carrying him fast and safely over green fields spotted and tinted with waving wild flowers; and through the fresh and cool breezes that are rushing about him, as he daily shortens the distance that lies between him and his wife and little ones, there is an exquisite pleasure yet to be learned, by those who never have felt it. ”

“ Ever since our first acquaintance with these people on the Atlantic shores, have we regularly advanced upon them; and far a-head of good and moral society have their first teachers travelled (and are yet travelling) , with vices and iniquities so horrible as to blind their eyes for ever to the light and loveliness of virtue, when she is presented to them.
It is in the bewildering maze of this moving atmosphere that he, in his native simplicity, finds himself lost amidst the ingenuity and sophistry of his new acquaintance. ”

“ We sometimes rode day after day, without a tree to shade us from the burning rays of a tropical sun, or a breath of wind to regale us or cheer our hearts—and with mouths continually parched with thirst, we dipped our drink from stagnant pools that were heated by the sun, and kept in fermentation by the wallowing herds of buffaloes that resort to them. In this way we dragged on, sometimes passing picturesque and broken country, with fine springs and streams, affording us the luxury of a refreshing shade and a cool draught of water. ”

“ And, amidst their poverty and wretchedness, the only war that suggests itself to the eye of the traveller through their country, is the war of sympathy and pity, which wages in the breast of a feeling, thinking man.
The small-pox, whose ravages have now pretty nearly subsided, has taken off a great many of the Winnebagoes and Sioux. The famous Wa-be-sha, of the Sioux, and more than half of his band, have fallen victims to it within a few weeks, and the remainder of them, blackened with its frightful distortions, look as it they had just emerged from the sulphurous regions below. ”

“ The “antres vast and deserts idle,” where the tomahawk sleeps with the bones of the savage, as yet untouched by the trespassing ploughshare—the pictured land of silence, which, in its melancholy alternately echoes backward and forward the plaintive yells of the vanished red men, and the busy chaunts of the approaching pioneers. I speak of the boundless plains of beauty, and Nature’s richest livery, where the waters of the “great deep” parted in peace, and gracefully passed off without leaving deformity behind them. ”

“ I have stood amidst these unsophisticated people, and contemplated with feelings of deepest regret, the certain approach of this overwhelming system, which will inevitably march on and prosper, until reluctant tears shall have watered every rod of this fair land; and from the towering cliffs of the Rocky Mountains, the luckless savage will turn back his swollen eye, over the blue157 and illimitable hunting grounds from whence he has fled, and there contemplate, like Caius Marius on the ruins of Carthage, their splendid desolation. ”

“ This is a celebrated point on the Missouri, and a sort of telegraphic place, which all the travellers in these realms, both white and red, are in the habit of visiting: the one to pay respect to the bones of one of their distinguished leaders; and the others, to indulge their eyes on the lovely landscape that spreads out to an almost illimitable extent in every direction about it. ”

“ Councils had been held, and in all the solemnity of Indian medicine and mystery, I had been doomed to die! At one of these, a young warrior of the Onc-pa-pa band, arose and said, ‘The blood of two chiefs has just sunk into the ground, and an hundred bows are bent which are ready to shed more! on whom shall we bend them? I am a friend to the white men, but here is one whose medicine is too great—he is a great medicine-man! his medicine is too great! he was the death of Mah-to-tchee-ga! ”

“ I said to my comrades, as we were about to descend from the towering bluffs into the prairie—“We will take that buffalo trail, where the travelling herds have slashed down the high grass, and making for that blue point, rising, as you can just discern, above this ocean of grass; a good day’s work will bring us over this vast meadow before sunset.” We entered the trail, and slowly progressed on our way, being obliged to follow the winding paths of the buffaloes, for the grass was higher than the backs of our horses. ”

“ The system of trade, and the small-pox, have been the great and wholesale destroyers of these poor people, from the Atlantic Coast to where they are now found. And no one but God, knows where the voracity of the one is to stop, short of the acquisition of everything that is desirable to money-making man in the Indian’s country; or when the mortal destruction of the other is to be arrested, whilst there is untried flesh for it to act upon, either within or beyond the Rocky Mountains. ”

“ On the eighth day of our march we met, for the first time, a herd of buffaloes; and being in advance of the command, in company with General Leavenworth, Colonel Dodge, and several other officers; we all had an opportunity of testing the mettle of our horses and our own tact at the wild and spirited death. The inspiration of chase took at once, and alike, with the old and the young; a beautiful plain lay before us, and we all gave spur for the onset. General Leavenworth and Colonel Dodge, with their pistols, gallantly and handsomely belaboured a fat cow, and were in together at the death. ”