Wild American Savages and the Civilized English: Catlin’s Indian Gallery and the Shows of London

Abstract

George Catlin was the outstanding painter of nineteenth-century American Indian life, and a flamboyant showman. Brian Dippie has shown that the two roles were intimately connected. 1 Catlin had a grand design to record "doomed" Indian cultures for posterity. "I have flown to the rescue of their looks and their modes," he pronounced from London in 1841. White settlers were exterminating them, "yet, phoenix-like, they may rise from 'the stain of the painter's palette,' and live again upon canvass, and stand forth for centuries to come, the living monuments of a noble race." 2 To this end, he persevered with his field research: he devoted half-a-dozen years in the 1830s to sketching and painting "wild" "red men" in the Great Plains, and spent several more in South America in the 1850s. He was scrupulous in recording the customs unique to the Plains tribes. In his Gallery catalogue, he certified that "every painting has been made from nature, BY MY OWN HAND," and showed "true and facsimile traces of individual life and historical facts." He took pains to establish his credentials as a true witness; to verify his claims, he quoted pages of testimonials from the great and the good associated with the Indian question and displayed their signatures to authenticate his illustrations. 3 His purpose, as he repeated many times, was to "impart useful instruction to those who are curious to learn the true character of the Indians." 4 2 For the remainder of his long life, he finished portraits and landscapes in the studio, produced numerous copies for sale, and decade after decade, lobbied Congress and appealed to wealthy benefactors for assistance. But when patronage failed to meet his pressing financial needs, he resorted to exhibitions that combined authentic artefacts Wild American Savages and the Civilized English: Catlin's Indian Gallery and ...

Imaginative Cosmos: The Impact of Colonial Heritage in Radio Astronomy and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

“…Green Bank, for example, is located in Pocahontas County, named for the daughter of the Powhatan chief who was later presented in England as an example of a "civilized savage." 31 The land was once the hunting grounds of the Iroquois, preserved by a 1758 treaty with Great Britain that forbade settlers from coming there. 32 A little over a decade later, however, with the start of the American War of Independence, the treaty was disregarded by the newly established United States, and the land was settled anyway.…”