My Life Among the Indians
George Catlin (1796–1872) was an American painter, novelist, and Old West wanderer who specialised in Native American portraiture. Catlin was the first white man to paint Plains Indians in their own country, having travelled to the American West five times during the 1830s.
The author spent eight years wandering among the Northwest and Plains Indians, chronicling their habits and observing them with pen and brush. Catlin documented his findings in a multi-volume collection of publications about the Indian tribes he encountered.
The sections of Catlin's works on North American Indians that will be of most interest to the public have been simplified and placed together in chronological order in "My Life Among the Indians."
It's a wonderful book to read and possess, as it's compiled from two big volumes of letters written by George Catlin, a well-known Indian painter. The artist's original drawings are used to create sixteen images. Mr. Catlin went extensively in Indian territory, accumulating a remarkable collection of Indian specimens that he later displayed in the United States and abroad. Many of these items, as well as his paintings depicting life among the Indians, are still on display in Washington. Catlin was the one who suggested in 1832 that the government set aside a large National Park in the Yellowstone region.
