The Red Man's Bones: George Catlin, Artist and Showman

George Catlin has been called the "first artist of the West," as none before him lived among and painted the Native American tribes of the Northern Plains. Catlin found his calling: to fix the image of a "vanishing race" before their "extermination"--his word. In the first six years of the 1830s, he created over six hundred portraits--unforgettable likenesses of individual chiefs, warriors, braves, squaws, and children belonging to more than thirty tribes living along the upper Missouri River. Political forces thwarted Catlin's ambition to sell what he called his "Indian Gallery" as a national collection, and in 1840 the artist began three decades of self-imposed exile abroad. For a time, he was the most celebrated American expatriate in London and Paris. But when he started to tour "live" troupes of Ojibwa and Iowa, his fortunes declined: he changed from artist to showman, and from advocate to exploiter. Tragedy and loss engulfed them. This humane portrait brings Catlin and his Indian subjects to life for our own time.--From publisher description.