The party returned to Fort Gibson, broken down with sickness and thinned in numbers. General Leavenworth and Lieutenant McClure died at the mouth of the False Washita, besides ten to fifteen of the dragoons. Mr. Beyrich, a Prussian botanist, who had made the journey with the regiment comfortably in a light dearborn waggon from St. Louis to Fort Gibson, and thence to the False Washita and the Cross Timbers, on his return to Fort Gibson and whilst engaged in preparing his specimens, fell a victim to the prevailing epidemic; his servant, a young German, was laid beside him. The whole party had endured much under almost tropical suns, suffering from thirst amidst salt streams and briny pools, and in a country which now abounds to profusion and is then bare of game, they were not always free from the cravings of hunger. "Of the four hundred and fifty fine fellows," says Mr. Catlin, "who started from this place four months since, about one third have already died, and I believe many more there are whose fates are sealed, and will yet fall victims to the deadly diseases contracted in that fatal country." The result of a hostile campaign against the lance and the bow of the Indian, would have been sport to the soldier, weighed against the ravages of disease, which, in this quarter of the west, is likely at some future day to extend its shield over some remnant of the Indian race. The second volume is full of much interesting narrative and description of many extreme and distant points of the wide and wild regions traversed by Mr. Catlin. The limits of this article but admit of some short extracts respecting the great mystery-spot of the western tribes "The Coteau des Prairies is the dividing ridge between the St. Peter's and Missouri rivers; its southern termination or slope is about in the latitude of the falls of St. Anthony, and it stands equidistant between the two rivers, its general course bearing two or three degrees west of north for two or three hundred miles." "This wonderful feature, which is several hundred miles in length, and varying from fifty to one hundred in width, is perhaps the noblest mound of its kind in the world; it gradually and gracefully rises on each side, by swell after swell, without tree, bush, or rock, (save what are to be seen in the vicinity of the Pipe Stone Quarry,) and every where covered with green grass, affording the traveller, from its highest elevation, the most unbounded and sublime view of nothing at all-save the blue and boundless ocean of prairies that lie beneath and all around him, vanishing into - 1842.] Catlin's North American Indians. 415 azure in the distance, without a speck or spot to break their softness."-Vol. ii., p. 204. Near the southern extremity and on the very top of this mound is the far-famed Pipe Stone Quarry; the striking feature of the scene is a perpendicular wall of twenty-five to thirty feet in height, composed of distinct horizontal layers of light grey and rose or flesh colored quartz, nearly two miles in length, and fronting to the west it disappears at both ends in the prairie which is there a little more elevated. The wash of a little stream, proceeding from springs a short distance back of the wall, has carried off the superincumbent earth, and, having bared the wall for a distance of two miles, now glides from some distance over the level surface of the rock, and leaps from the top of the wall into a deep basin below, forming the extreme source of one of the head streams of the "Big Sioux" river. Below the wall and parallel with it, is a level prairie of half a mile wide, in all parts of which the slaty layers of red stone are found to the depth of four or five feet. Dr. Jackson, of Boston, to whom Mr. Catlin sent specimens, pronounces it "a new mineral compound, not steatite, harder than gypsum, and softer than carbonate. of lime." From this stone are formed the bowls of the pipes. which are found amongst all the tribes of the west, and Catlin extends it even to all of the continent. The different tribes have various traditions respecting this spot, and of the manifestations of the power of the Great Spirit by which it is consecrated. This has, for centuries, been a hallowed and neutral ground, resorted to by the tribes of the Missouri and the Mississippi. The totems and distinguishing marks of the different tribes are deeply engraven on the quartz rocks, besides thousands of paintings and inscriptions-excavations of the clay or stone, ancient and recent, with remains of graves and mounds. Five huge granite boulders rest upon the plain below the wall, at the base of which the Indian seeks to propitiate the guardian spirits of the place by offerings of tobacco, and entreats permission to take away a small piece of the red stone for a pipe. Of late years, the Sioux have asserted and have endeavored to establish an exclusive right to this sacred spot, even as against their red brethren, and with more, nay, good reason, against the intrusion of the pale face. Catlin and his English fellow traveller, Mr. Wood, at a spot called Traverse des Sioux, on the St. Peter's, one hundred and fifty miles from the Platte, were stopped and detained per force, by what for once he calls, forgetting himself, a rascally band of about twenty Sioux, who remonstrated, with much vehemence and no small threatenings, against the determination of the travellers to proceed to the great mystery-place of the Indian race. Had he bethought himself for a moment of the feelings of an Indian, or of the hazard which a stranger runs by intruding upon the sanctity of a Mahometan mosque or a Hindoo dewal, he might, either from a regard to ancient religious prejudices or a reasonable apprehension of danger to himself, have turned away his footsteps from the sacred stone. However, every where throughout this work, by pleasing pictures, Mr. Catlin manifests an opposite feeling towards the tribes yet free from pestilential contact with the white frontier, his esteem of their simple virtues within themselves, of their hospitable dispositions toward the stranger, and by his spirited sketches of the sports of peace, and bold traits of bravery in war, he sedulously exalts the character of the free roamer of the prairie. "The slave of none, of beasts alone the lord." He boldly testifies to the excellent qualities of the much maligned Crows and Blackfeet-honest, brave, and high minded. Nor are the Sioux, of the Missouri, to be given over quietly to the condemnatory sentence of the white man. Where can be found a bold and fearless race, showing tenderer feelings, than in the council of the Pawnees of the Red River? Look at the gentle, brave, and honorable Mandans. In every place where the cupidity of trade, and the vices and corruptions of the worst part of a white frontier have not corrupted native simplicity, towards friends and strangers the Indian is friendly, just and hospitable, and reserves for his enemy, as part of the code of self-defence, the right and the violence of retaliation. In domestic life polygamy is a social institution for the better maintenance of families-nor is the quiet of home ruffled by it; and, where the white man has not poisoned their manners, no where do we see a prevailing corruption in the intercourse of the sexes; no where, it is needless to say, and, under no circumstances, the unutterable abominations of Eastern India. Catlin tells of one instance, most likely of rare occurrence, of the exposure of one of the Puncahs, bowed down by a weight of five score years, and who, 100 feeble for travel, was deserted by a band of Puncahs, when starting for their hunting grounds. He himself beheld 1842.] Catlin's North American Indians. 447 him resigned to his fate, under a slight shelter and with a scanty stock of provisions. His bones were, at a subsequent day, seen bleaching upon the prairie; but no where amongst them do we read of the exposure of helpless infants, or the sale of young children, occurrences so shocking in the east. They have a simple moral code written on their conscience, which implicitly believes in and relies upon the Great Spirit and Father of all men. It is one amongst the inscrutable dispensations of Almighty Providence, that the religious belief of a rude race should be so simple. They have no idol to fill a niche beneath the dome of a heathen pantheon. And it is a theme of wonder and of praise to a philosopher and a Christian, that their religious ceremonies and observances are so free from the moral impurities and bloody stains found at an earlier day among the nations nearer the seats of patriarchal rites; and that primæval truths have been preserved through successive ages, and still subsist in an integrity and clearness, which, in the almost universal flood of idolatrous worship, was not to be expected amongst any people but those who dwelt compassed about with the horizon of the day-spring from on high. And the Indian, besides, is eminently devout, the victim of self-torture, and the agony of prayer. Yet still has he proved himself, in such moral course of life, and of simplicity of belief, a hesitating and reluctant disciple under the teachings of either civilization or Christianity. Whilst the descendants of the stranger of the pale face increase and flourish under the shade and shelter of civil and religious institutions — wide and more widely as their branches extend, they seem to drop naught but blight and mildew on the shrivelled natives of the land. In the advance of civilization, as year follows upon year, tribe after tribe of the red race is driven off the possessions of his fathers from every fruitful hill and every fertile valley from every fair lake and pleasant river, to wear out existence, in hunger and hardship, amid the barren crags and deep defiles of the mountains, or to waste away, where "sickness pines the clime," amid the tangled wilderness and pestilential marshes of sea or river shore. Humboldt, one of the greatest philosophic travellers, says of the Indians of our continent "The savage state in America is not the dawning of a rising people, but the fading of one sinking and overthrown by overwhelming catastrophes." Such too surely seems to be their state; and that ultimately, as a distinct nation or nations, they must vanish from this North American continent. All that kind hearts and hands have done for their preservation, from Columbus and Las Casas down to William Penn and the friends of their race, to the present day, has been unavailing. Try what we may for their security, by prohibiting the ingress of the white trader and trapper, by cutting off pernicious intercourse, it does seem, to a reflective mind, that has watched the successive waste of the race, that we can but acquiesce in their fate, and endeavor to smoothe their downward way to utter extinction. and regress ART. VII. Histoire de l'Art moderne en Allemagne. Par le Comte A. RACZYNSKI. 3 vols. 4to. Chaque volume accompagné d'un Atlas de gravures sur cuivre. Paris: 1836-1841. Ir has been asserted, that the growth of Art, in ancient Greece, was greatly influenced by their forms of social polity; and that the superiority of the Greeks over contemporary nations, in all matters relating to the fine arts, was the result of the enjoyment of freer political institutions than those possessed by their neighbors. But if a comparatively wiser and more equal system of laws was the sole or most efficient cause of the excellence of Grecian art, how shall we account for the fact that, in modern times, painting, architecture, sculpture and music, instead of attaining their fullest development in republics, or in limited monarchies savoring of republicanism, have grown most vigorously beneath the shadow of despotic authority, and in countries where even rational freedom is mistaken for licentious anarchy? Civil liberty is an excellent thing in itself; but we are not inclined to attribute to it a miraculous influence over the minds and hearts of men, and have little faith in its exclusive power of fostering the development of arts, perhaps more agreeable than useful. Indeed, we believe that a careful examination of the rise and progress of painting and sculpture in different countries, will |
