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Table of Contents

Author’s illness from overtalking in his collection—Daniel’s illness from the same cause—Character of Daniel—His labour-saving plan for answering one hundred questions—His disappointment—Daniel travels to Ireland for his health—Author prepares to publish his Notes of Travel amongst the Indians—John Murray (publisher)—His reasons for not publishing the Author’s work—His friendly advice—Author’s book published by himself at the Egyptian Hall—Illustrious subscribers—Thomas Moore—Critical notices in London papers.

In this manner passed the time from day to day, from week to week, and from month to month; and as I was daily growing richer, I was daily growing poorer—i.e. I was day by day losing my flesh, not from the usual cause, the want of enough to eat, but from derangement of the lungs and the stomach, both often overworked, with a constant excitement and anxiety of the mind, the seat of which was not far distant.

I endeavoured, however, and gradually succeeded in dividing my time and my thoughts, giving a proper proportion to the public in my rooms, a portion to my friends, and (as it was then becoming a matter of necessity for the preparation of my notes of eight years’ travel, which were soon to be published) decidedly the greater part to myself, leaving my exhibition mostly to the management of my men, of whom I had several, and all familiar enough with the meaning of everything in the collection to give a lucid description of its contents.

As I was gradually receding from the exhibition, the arduous duties began to thicken more strongly upon my man Daniel, of whom I have before often spoken. He had been longest associated with me and my collection, and having it more by heart than the rest, was the foremost man in illustrating it, of which he had been curator for seven or eight years. I have before mentioned that he was of a quick and irascible disposition, exceedingly tenacious of national feelings, and those national prejudices mostly in favour of the country I said he had some twenty years since adopted—the United States. Though he was quick-tempered and violent in his prejudices, there was always the redeeming trait at the end, that his anger was soon over, and there was good nature and civility at the bottom.

Though I had often complaints made to me of the want of politeness or of the rudeness of my man Daniel, I generally found that they were instances where he had been provoked to it by some unnecessary allusions to the vices of his own country, or by some objections to his political opinions relative to the institutions of the United States, upon which subjects he holds himself exceedingly punctilious and very well prepared for debate. With whatever foibles he has, I have found him invariably and strictly an honest man; and many of his highest offences alleged to have been given to the public in my rooms, were given strictly in obedience to my orders for the support of the regulations of my exhibition, or for the protection of my property and the advancement of my interest. To those who entered my rooms respectfully for information, he was civil and communicative, and all such drew valuable information from him, and many became attached to him. His lungs were now labouring for me, while mine were getting a little rest; and from morning to night of every day he was conducting individuals and parties around the rooms, pointing out and explaining the leading peculiarities of the museum, and answering the thousand questions that were asked by all classes of society relative to the looks, the modes, and habits of the Indians—the countries they lived in—and also of Mr. Catlin, the proprietor and collector of the museum, whom all were anxious to see, and many of whom had been led to believe was himself an Indian.

In my own answering of these questions, many of which were natural to be raised on so new and exciting a subject, I was often amused, and as often surprised at the novelty and ignorance of many of them, even amongst a polite and well-clad and apparently well-educated class of people. Many of the questions, which only excited a smile with me, elicited broad laughter from Daniel, which he could not help, and having laughed, could not well avoid expressing his surprise at, and his detection of, which gave umbrage, and sometimes was another cause of difficulties that he occasionally though seldom got into.

I observed, after a while, that the same causes which had affected me were emaciating him, and he finally told me that he was talking his lungs out—and that he could not bear it much longer at the rate he was going on. The questions which were constantly put to him in the room were so much of a sort, or class, that there was little variety or novelty in them to please or excite him; almost every person putting the same; much the greater part of them being general, and therefore irksome to him, as they were often asked a hundred or more times in the day and as often answered. He came to me one evening, seemingly much relieved from the painful prospect he had been suffering under, and which was still before him, by the hope that I would adopt a plan he had hit upon for obviating much of the difficulty, and of saving his lungs for the explanations of questions which might be casual, and not exactly reduced to rule. He said he had ascertained that there were about 100 questions which were commonplace—were put (and in the same way precisely) by the greater part of people who came in, and had time to ask them; and that 50 of those, at least, were asked 100 times per day, the answering of which took the greater part of his time and the best part of his strength, which he thought might be reserved for giving more useful information, while these 100 questions, the most of which were extremely simple or silly, and of little importance to be known, might be disposed of by a printed table of answers placed around the rooms for every one to read as they walked, without the loss of time and fatigue consequent upon the usual mode of asking and answering questions. Though I could not consent to adopt his mode, yet I was amused at its ingenuity; and I give here but a small part of his list, which commenced and ran thus:—

“The Indians have no beards at all, only may be one in twenty or so.”

“The Indians don’t shave—they pull it out, when they have any beard.”

“Virtuous?—Yes. I should say they are quite as much so as the whites, if the whites would keep away from them and let them alone.”

“Ah, as amorous?—No. Mr. Catlin says they have not the spices of life and the imaginations to set them on, or I’ll venture they would be quite as bad as the whites.”

“The Indians in America are not cannibals. Mr. Catlin says there is no such thing.”

“No, there are no tribes that go entirely naked; they are all very decent.”

“The Indians don’t eat raw meat, they cook it more than the whites do.”

“Mr. Catlin was amongst the Indians eight years, and was never killed during that time.”

“The scalp is a patch of the skin and hair taken from the top of the head by a warrior when he kills his enemy in battle.”

“No, they don’t scalp the living—it is not a scalp to count if the man is alive.”

“They sometimes eat a great deal, to be sure, but generally not so much as white people.”

“They do get drunk sometimes, but white people sell them rum and make them so, therefore I don’t think we ought to call them drunkards exactly.”

“The Indians all get married—some have a number of wives.”

“Yes, they seem as fond of their wives as any people I ever saw.”

“The Indians never injured Mr. Catlin in any way.”

“Mr. Catlin didn’t live on ‘raw meat;’ he was one time eighteen months with nothing but meat to eat, but it was well cooked.”

“The Indians know nothing about salt—they don’t use it at all.”

“Reason! yes; why, do you think they are wild beasts? to be sure they reason as well as we do.”

“They are thieves, sometimes; but I don’t think they thieve so often as white people do.”

“The Indians do lend their wives sometimes to white men, but it is only their old superannuated ones, who are put aside to hard labour, so it is a sort of kindness all around, and I don’t see that there is much harm in it.”

“The Indians all have their religion, they all worship the Great Spirit.”

“They are treacherous, to be sure, towards their enemies only, and I’ll be whipped if the white people an’t just as bad.”

“The Indians are cruel, there’s no mistake about that; but it is only to their enemies.”

“Sale? there won’t be any sale; Mr. Catlin don’t intend to sell his collection in this country.”

“Mr. Catlin is not an Indian.”

“No, he has no Indian blood in him.”

“Mr. Catlin speaks the English language very well.”

“The Indians don’t raise tea.”

“They never eat the scalps.”

“The Indians that Mr. Catlin saw are not near Chusan, they are 3,000 miles from there, they are in America.”

“You can’t come overland from America.”

“A scalping-knife is any large knife that an Indian takes a scalp with.”

“A prairie is a meadow.”

“The Indians speak their own language.”

“A pappoose is an Indian baby while it is carried in the cradle.”

“A prairie bluff is a hill that is covered with grass.”

“The Rocky Mountains are in America, between New York and the Pacific Ocean, and not in the Indies at all.”

“A snag is a large tree that is lying in the river, its roots fast in the mud at the bottom, and its trunk at the top, pointing down the stream.”

“Sawyers are not alligators.”

“An alligator is a sort of crocodile.”

“The Chesapeake didn’t take the Shannon, it was the Shannon that took the Chesapeake.”

“The Americans are white, the same colour exactly as the English, and speak the same language, only they speak it a great deal better, in general.”

“A stump is the but-end and roots of a tree standing in the ground after the tree is chopped down.”

“It is true that all Indian women stay away from their husbands the seven days of their illness, and I think they are the decentest people of the two for doing it.”

“A squaw is an Indian woman who is married.”

“The Calumet is a pipe of peace.”

“Horns on a chief’s head-dress have no bad meaning.”

“Mr. Catlin is not a repudiator,” &c., &c.

And thus went on poor Daniel’s list to the number of about 100 commonplace questions which he had hoped to have disposed of by a sort of steam operation; but finding that they must all continue to be “done by hand,” as before, he returned to his post, which, from his disappointment in his unrealized hopes, seemed to drag more heavily than ever upon him, and so rapidly to wear him down that he was obliged to plan a tour to his own native land of Erin, where he went for some weeks, to restore his lungs and his strength. His labour-saving suggestion might have been a very convenient one for me in his absence, but it was dispensed with, and he was soon back at his post, recruited and assuming the command again, whilst I was busy in advancing the material for my forthcoming work.

The Notes of my Eight Years’ Travels amongst Forty-eight different Tribes of Indians in America, to be illustrated with more than 300 steel plate illustrations, were nearly ready to be put to press; and I called on my good friend John Murray, in Albemarle Street, believing that he would be glad to publish them for me. To my surprise he objected to them (but without seeing my manuscript), for two reasons which he at once alleged: first, because he was afraid of the great number of illustrations to be embodied in the work, and secondly for (certainly) the most unfashionable reason, that “he loved me too much!” I had brought a letter of introduction to him from his old friend Washington Irving; and from the deep interest Mr. Murray had taken in my collection and the history and prospects of the poor Indians, my rooms (which were near his dwelling-house) were his almost daily resort, and I a weekly guest at his hospitable board, where I always met gentlemen of eminence connected with literature and art. Good and generous old man! he therefore “loved me too much” to share with me the profits of a work which he said should all belong to me for my hard labour and the risks of my life I had run in procuring it; and as the means of enlarging those profits he advised me to publish it myself. “I would advise you,” said he, “as one of your best friends, to publish your own book; and I am sure you will make a handsome profit by it. Being an artist yourself, and able to make the drawings for your 300 illustrations, which for me would require a very great outlay to artists to produce them, and having in your exhibition-room the opportunity of receiving subscriptions for your work, which I could not do, it will be quite an easy thing for you to take names enough to cover all the expenses of getting it up, which at once will place you on safe ground; and if the work should be well received by Mr. Dilke and others of the critical world, it will insure you a handsome reward for your labours, and exceedingly please your sincere friend, John Murray.”

This disinterested frankness endeared me to that good man to his last days, and his advice, which I followed, resulted, as he had predicted, to my benefit. My subscription list my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had in a few days commenced, with the subscriptions of

Her most gracious MAJESTY the QUEEN,

H. R. H. Prince Albert,

Her Majesty the Queen Dowager,

H. R. H. the Duchess of Kent,

His Majesty the King of the Belgians,

H. M. the Queen of the Belgians,

His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex,

H. R. H. Leopold Duc de Brabant.

After which soon followed a complimentary list of the nobility and gentry, together with the leading institutions of the kingdom.

My work was published by myself, at the Egyptian Hall, and the only fears which my good friend John Murray had expressed for me were all dispersed by the favourable announcements by Mr. Dilke, of the Athenæum, and the editors of other literary journals, from which it will be seen that the subjoined notices are but very brief extracts.

It may not be improper also here to remark, that for all the Royal copies subscribed for above, the Hon. C. A. Murray was ordered to remit me double the amount of the price of the work; and that, on a subsequent occasion, when my dear wife and myself were guests at the dinner table of John Murray, he said to his old friend Thomas Moore, who was by our side, “That wild man by the side of you there, Mr. Catlin, who has spent enough of his life amongst the wild Indians (sleeping on the ground and eating raw buffalo meat) to make you and I as grey as badgers, and who has not yet a grey hair in his head, applied to me about a year ago to publish his Notes. I was then—for the first time in my life—too honest for my own interest, as well as that of an author; and I advised him to publish it himself, as the surest way of making something out of it. My wife here will tell you that I have read every word of it through, heavy as it is, and she knows it is the only book that I have read quite through in the last five years. And I tell Mr. Catlin now, in your presence, that I shall regret as long as I live that I did not publish that work for him; for as sincerely as I advised him, I could have promoted his interest by so doing, and would have done so, had I known what was in the work when he proposed it to me.”

The reader will pardon me for inserting here the critical notices which follow:—