Carlos Krebs George Catlin and SouthAmerica

George Catlin and South America: A Look at His "Lost" Years and His Paintings ofNortheastern ArgentinaAuthor(s): Edgardo Carlos KrebsReviewed work(s):Source: American Art Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter, 1990), pp. 4-39Published by: Kennedy Galleries, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1594569 .Accessed: 21/01/2013 19:35

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GEORGE CATLIN AND SOUTH AMERICA: A Look at His "Lost" Years and His Paintings of Northeastern Argentina Edgardo Carlos Krebs

EORGE CATLIN (1796-1872) set himself a purpose in life: to become the historian of the

North American Indian. By that he meant going West and painting "Man, in the simplicity and lofti- ness of his nature," and recording "carefully and correctly" the "character and customs" of Indian peoples.' He thought Indians would disappear soon, absorbed or forced into extinction by the advance of the frontier. In the 1830s Catlin made a series of trips through Indian territory, in the North American West, the outcome of which were the over four hundred portraits and landscapes of the "Indian Gallery" and Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians (London, 1841), a two-volume work that is a classic of American ethnography. Such industry might sug- gest that Catlin had a successful career, but the opposite is true. He failed throughout his lifetime to sell the Gallery to Congress; moreover, he was accused of lying, of inventing his ethnographic data. In the 1840s he sought success abroad, traveling with his Gallery in Great Britain and France. But this venture ended in disaster: his wife died, and then his son; finally he ran into debt and had to be saved from creditors by a fellow American, Joseph Harrison, who paid off the debt, and kept the Indian Gallery as guarantee. The Gallery was shipped to Philadelphia, and Catlin never saw it again.2 All this has been told and retold by Catlin scholars.3

This article deals mainly with some problems raised by a later period of Catlin's life, specifically EDGARDO CARLOS KREBS, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, received his master's degree in social anthropology from Oxford University for which he wrote the thesis, "George Catlin and the Argentine Indians." He is now completing his doctorate at Oxford, writing a dissertation on the history of anthropological ideas in the River Plate during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since 1988 he has visited Washington, D.C., on several occasions to carry out independent research at the Smithsonian Institution. Mr. Krebs is also editing his first documentary film, "Spencer's Last Jour- ney," based on journals kept in Tierra del Fuego by the anthropologist Sir Baldwin Spencer, who died there while doing field work, in 1929.

with what he did or did not do in the 1850s, after he had lost the Indian Gallery.

Between 1854 and 1860 Catlin almost "disap- peared." He maintained that during those years he made two trips to South America, to regions ranging as widely as the Orinoco and Amazon basins, in northern South America, and the Strait of Magellan, at the southernmost tip of the continent. When Cat- lin "reappeared" in Brussels, in the 1860s, he was working on a new set of paintings-the Cartoon Collection (Figs. 1, 6-13, 16, 17, 22-24)-and on three books, all of them based on the South Ameri- can experiences.4

There is something worrying about this "period." No documentation has been found to confirm that Catlin went to South America at all. What he has to say about these trips is often confusing and contradictory. And from an ethnographic point of view, the collection of paintings and books on South America cannot compare, in quality or scope, with the earlier works on North America (Fig. 2). In fact, a first impression could even lead one to ponder whether Catlin might have fabricated all his South American material-the travels, the paintings, the books.

In 1854, when the South American "period" begins, Catlin was bankrupt and in no position to plan an extensive and costly series of trips abroad. One can assume that he was not in the best possible spirits either, having just lost not only the Indian Gallery, but also his wife and son. It is reasonable to think that he must have been very confused at the time, and at a loss of what to do next. Catlin himself gives sufficient indications in Last Rambles Amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes (1867) that his first alleged trip to South America was linked not with an ongoing project of painting Indians but to the idea of finding gold in Brazil and starting a mining company there-a project, by the way, which was not altogether mad.5 In the attempt to analyze those "lost" years in Catlin's career, many problems and questions begin to emerge. The most obvious is posed by the sheer

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Fig. 1. George Catlin. LENGUA CHIEF, HIS TWO WIVES, AND FOUR CHILDREN. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 x 23 7/8". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt, Washington, D.C.


Fig. 2. George Catlin. Two CROWS. 1832. Oil on canvas, 29 x 24". Collection, National Museum ofAmerican Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.


size of the geographical area involved (Fig. 3). This article will be confined to examining the information Catlin gives on his travels in the northeastern area of Argentina, just one of the countries adduced by the South American itineraries. Even within this reduced frame of reference, the range of the itineraries is somewhat breathtaking: we are told by Catlin that after returning from the northeast, his Argentine travels continued from there first in the Pampas, on horseback, and then by ship to Patagonia. The whole makes for a very arduous and crowded schedule, and one that only gets more demanding if Catlin's other routes in South America between 1854 and 1860 are recalled. Let us remind ourselves that in that short period he purported to have traveled through no less than the Orinoco and Amazon basins, and to have crossed the Andes and even wandered in the Yucatan Peninsula. Although one might not get that impression from reading Catlin's biographers,6 the areas joined by those itineraries are huge and far distant from one other. Moreover, from an ethnographical and an ethnohistorical point of view, they are also very dissimilar. These itineraries and no less than thirty-four different South American Indian groups are listed in the catalogue of the Cartoon Collection7 -groups whose cultures were variously attuned to rain forest, plains, coastal and high-altitude plateau habitats. This is the complex background against which Catlin's extensive travels have to be matched.

The difficulties of interpreting his observations only begin with the mere geographical scope: the hard thing to do is to place the testimony Catlin gave of South American Indians-visual and literary-in some sort of focused, pertinent context. For instance, do the images he provided of a particular tribe coincide with what we know about it from other sources? Is his information about places and about Indian customs broadly correct or fictional? How do Catlin's South American paintings stand, as a record of Indian life, within the iconographic traditions of Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina?

And what if this kind of approach did reveal that Catlin might have invented a part of his Indian paintings and "on the spot" reporting? Such a possibility moves the inquiry into a completely different realm. It would be important, for instance, to consider Cat- lin's purposes, how other artists were representing Indians in that period, and whether an enterprise as ambitious as his was possible in the 1850s.

It is hoped that by focusing on a narrower area-northeastern Argentina-the issues raised by these broad questions related to Catlin's South American itineraries will become clearer and can then be more adequately investigated.

A search in the Archivo Nacional of Buenos Aires for Catlin's name in the register of passengers kept by the port authority of that city was not successful.8 This being the case, another way of broadly testing the authenticity of his presence in Argentina is by seeing how well his reports match other sources, without duplicating them.

The approximate date Catlin gives for his journey to the Rio de la Plata is the fall of 1855.9 This is confirmed by a letter from the German scientist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), dated Sep- tember 12, 1855, addressed to Catlin and accompanied by another introductory letter for the French botanist Aim6 Bonpland (1773-1858) who was then living in Argentina.'o Humboldt had met Catlin in Paris and had shown interest in his ethnographic work. Before leaving for Argentina, Catlin visited Humboldt in Berlin to discuss his plans. Bonpland had been Humboldt's companion during his travels of exploration in South America, half a century earlier. In 1816 Bonpland was lured by the first government of the Argentine Confederation to travel to that country and settle there. Bonpland was asked to organize the botanical gardens in Buenos Aires, but the plan fell through sometime after he arrived there in 1817 and he had to cope with this turn of events. He remained in the country until his death, in 1858, leading a remarkable but almost unknown life. Bon- pland and Humboldt stayed in contact during all those years through correspondence."

In the 1871 catalogue for an exhibition of his Cartoon Collection in New York, Catlin presents an itinerary that takes him from Le Havre directly to Rio de Janeiro and then to Buenos Aires. Character- istically, in Last Rambles, he had given a different account, by placing his arrival in Rio "after a long and interesting voyage-or series of voyages" in the Caribbean. His account of the stay in Rio is equally vague. He describes the city as "beautiful" with an "amusing" plaza and inhabitants who are "gay and rich."12

When he wrote in Last Rambles about his arrival in Buenos Aires, on a date not specified and on a ship whose name is not given, Catlin failed to comment on an event that seldom passed unnoticed by other visitors: the way passengers were landed. In contrast, the descriptions of this event by the South American-born French painter Jean L6on Pallibre (1823-1887)-and of the things he saw from the ship while approaching the city-fill the reader with confidence, giving him a sense of place. Pallibre, for instance, states how many shipping lines crossed the Atlantic from Europe to Buenos Aires, and in what time they got there. The city, he tantalizingly



describes as lying on a plain, slightly above the water level, its low profile here and there raised by the towers of churches; the houses, he notes, were pre- dominantly white, with roofs "painted pink and yel- low." The port was so shallow, he explained, that when winds blew from the south, incoming ships had to anchor a long way off the coast, and "a kind of wagon manned by a gaucho on horseback" drove into the water, "its wheels submerged to the axis," and pulled in to the side of the ship. The passengers were then transferred to the wagon and carried to the wharf (Fig. 4).13

Soon after his arrival in Buenos Aires, Catlin got in touch with someone he describes as "my friend Thomas," in whose house he was "made wel- come."'14 Taking the last months of 1855 as a time reference (and assuming that Catlin would address this man by his first name), "Thomas" could have been Lieutenant Thomas Jefferson Page (1808- 1899), who was then in Buenos Aires as commander of a mission assigned to him by the Secretary of the United States Navy. The mission consisted of exploring the tributaries of the Rio de la Plata, and had begun in 1853, soon after the defeat of Juan Manuel de Rosas (who had been the strongman of the Argentine Confederation for over twenty years) made it possible for vessels of foreign countries to navigate the waters of the Parand and Uruguay. Free navigation of these rivers had been forbidden by Rosas, a decision which eventually led to a skirmish between a Franco-British fleet and the Argentines at the Vuelta de Obligado. This obstacle removed with Rosas's downfall, the Americans were quick to send an exploratory party under Lieutenant Page. Infor- mation on the landscape and resources up the Paranad and Uruguay rivers had, nevertheless, been industri- ously collected during Rosas's regime by a number of travelers, among whom were some British and American consuls. ~5

On board the Water Witch, a small side-wheel steamer, Lieutenant Page and his party managed to reconnoiter part of the Paranai, until an incident with the Paraguayan government blocked further progress to the north. The river Uruguay was also explored up to Salto Grande, where navigation on a big vessel was made impractical by rapids. One of the successes of Page's expedition was the discovery of the sources of the Rio Salado in the Chaco region. It is known that Page took along a daguerreotype camera which he seems to have especially cared for.'6 Interestingly, the American botanist Edward Palmer, who later became a collector for the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institu- tion, was one of the men under Page's command.17

Fig. 3 (opposite). Drawn by A. H. Dufour, under the direction of Alcide d'Orbigny. CARTE GINtRALE DE L'AMIRIQUE DU SUD ET DES ILES QUI EN DIPENDENT. 1836. Engraving from Alcide d'Orbigny, Voyage dans L'Am6rique Mridionale, 9 vols. (Paris, 1835-1847). Collection, General Research Di- vision, The New York Public Library, Astor; Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

All this exploring activity on land and on water, in an ethnographically rich area he intended to visit himself, would, of course, have provided Catlin with precisely the information he needed. "Thomas" also recommended to Catlin "a faithful servant man- Jose Alzar" whose name was "pronounced Althar" Catlin pointed out, "-whom he had employed for several years, and whose native place was Corrientes.

.... His knowledge of the country, and of

several of the Indian tribes, and of their languages" wrote Catlin, "was just the thing for me.""

Unfortunately, all attempts to prove the hypoth- esis that "Thomas" was Lieutenant Page, have, so far, been unsuccessful. Catlin's name does not appear in Page's book on Argentina, La Plata: The Argentine Confederation and Paraguay (1859) nor in the surviving letters and papers he sent, while on his mission, to the Secretary of the Navy. The name of Alzar is not to be found in those documents either.19

Page left Buenos Aires for the United States on December 15, 1855. Catlin would, therefore, have failed to meet Page if he had arrived only a little later than when he supposedly did. Also, and as a final comment in favor of the meeting taking place, it could be noted that on returning from his trip on the Parani and Uruguay rivers, Catlin found himself a room in a hotel. This would be consistent with the

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Fig. 4. Jean Lion Pallikre. DESEMBARQUE CON RIO BAJO (BUENOS AIRES). 1864-1865. Lithograph, 7 x 12 11/16". Private collection.


fact that "Thomas"-if he were Page-would have already left Buenos Aires.

According to his narrative, Catlin seems to have spent very little time in Buenos Aires during his first stay there. He and Alzar boarded a steamer and headed up the Paranai toward Corrientes (Fig. 5) very soon after his arrival. From newspapers of the time, it is possible to see that in the 1850s considerable commercial traffic linked Buenos Aires with Asunci6n, the capital of Paraguay and, at one time, the center of the so-called Jesuit empire. The bulk of this traffic, of course, was operated by ships which traveled back and forth using the waterway of the Parandi. As noted by George J. R. Gordon, part of this commerce was conducted through a system of barter.20 The pages of El Comercio, a newspaper published in the city of Corrientes, give a very lively impression of affairs in the area, around the time of Catlin's visit, when the province had 85,447 inhabitants.21 Full reports were printed of events abroad, quoting from European and British newspapers which reached the Parana via sailing packets. In this way the local people could follow the news of the Crimean War, learning about the Russian army leaving its position at Kalugereni and of how the Times criticized Britain's poorly conducted siege of Sebas- topol.22 The arrival and departure of the post were closely monitored by the newspaper, as the numerous printed notices to that effect show. Contact with the world beyond occurred, too, through the impor- tation of many goods. An advertisement from the market of the town of Goya includes a list of prices for cooking oil from France and Italy, tobacco from Paraguay, rice from Brazil, fireworks from India, flour from the United States, dried fruit and wine from Spain, and beer from England.23

Catlin records nothing of the voyage up river, until the steamer reached Corrientes, over six hundred miles from Buenos Aires. In Corrientes, he rec- ollects landing and taking his luggage to a hotel and spending most of his time to the north and south of the city, in Indian "wigwams" to which he was a "constant visitor."24 No description is given of the "wigwams," or of the materials from which they were made. He mentions meeting Payagua (Fig. 6), and, more interestingly-as we will see-Botocudo Indians (see Figs. 12 and 13). The latter "had made long voyages in their canoes, and were soon to return to their native countries," which he rightly places in Brazil,25 although they lived in the environs of San Salvador do Bahia, a great distance from the Corrientes area he is describing. Catlin is accurate in placing the Payagua on one bank of the Paraguay River and the Chaco on the other (see Figs. 22 and

23). An interesting piece of news involving Indians and their mobility around the Corrientes area was published in El Comercio on November 29, 1855. It involved the Zenta, a vessel which called into the port of Corrientes on the way back from exploring the Bermejo River. The Zenta's pilot was a member of Lieutenant Page's team. The vessel had carried on board some Indians, who, El Comercio reported, were now returning to their camps. This small epi- sode suggests that the Indian presence around Corri- entes was indeed common, as Catlin's testimony indicates. A census of 1857 states, though, that only seven Indians were permanently domiciled in the city.26 This information is consistent with Catlin's report of transient "wigwams" to the north and south of the city.

From Corrientes, Catlin and Alzar headed northeast up the Paranai but on a different vessel. The trading steamer most likely continued to Asunci6n, taking the course of the Paraguay River. Catlin describes the new situation as follows:

A sort of barge, not unlike the keel-boats of the Mis- souri, propelled by eight oars, and freighted, not unlike the crafts of that river, with stuffs and hardware, &c ... was starting for the upper waters of the Parana; and Alzar agreeing to handle an oar, and myself to lend a hand in rapid water, got us an agreeable and amusing passage to the mouth of the Iguazu River... from which point we designed to cross the country to the upper waters of the Uruguay, and descend that river to Buenos Ayres .. .27

Still on their way farther up the river, Catlin, out of the "total nothingness" for him to do, shoots at wa- terfowl with his revolver, a contraption his compan- ions had never seen before. The sun was "insupportably hot"; rapids "became frequent, and laborious, and tedious, and were said to be more so ahead of us."28 At Candelaria, Catlin and his guide finally stepped off the barge and crossed overland to the town of Concepci6n, close to the banks of the Uruguay River.

When reviewing Catlin's description of this second leg of the itinerary, one cannot but confirm its verisimilitude. Barges of eight oars, such as the one described by Catlin, were frequently advertised for sale in the region's newspapers; an old royal road that linked Candelaria to Concepci6n was the short- est and surest way of crossing the land between the Parand and the Uruguay.29 Finally, the sun should have been hot, since the journey was probably taking place around late January or early February, during the summer season, when the waters of the ParanB do thin down, and rapids-in the precise area they were navigating-become numerous, as he



Fig. 5. Drawn by Parchappe (first name unknown) after his own observations and those of Alcide d'Or- bigny. CARTE D'UNE PARTIE DE LA REPpQU ARGENTINE COMPRENANT LES PROVINCES DE CORRIENTES ET DESMISSIONS. 1835. Engraving, by L Bouffard, from d'Orbigny, Voyage dans L'Am6rique M6ridionale. Col- lection, George Peabody Library, The Johns Hopkins University, Bal- timore, Maryland.

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Fig. 6. George Catlin. MEMBERS OF THE PAYAGUA TRIBE. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 3/8 x 24 3/8". Paul Mel- lon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

described. The revolver incident is also interesting: able in the use of knives, gauchos, in general, shied away from firearms, closing their eyes when shoot- ing, and aiming miserably."? Catlin also mentions, in passing, "cliffs of red sandstone." "Red earth" is, in fact, a geological characteristic of those parts of northern Corrientes and the province of Misiones, which were on Cat- lin's way to Candelaria.

For the return trip down the Uruguay River to Buenos Aires, Alzar obtained in Concepci6n a dug- out canoe and the help of an "old acquaintance" who would journey with them (Fig. 7). The trip itself was

recounted by Catlin in his usual haphazard way. He uses several pages to explain his recipe for preparing "Mosquito Soup"; mentions that the party slept on islands; slips off into a long digression about the Amazonian Indians' body paint (which he calls "theorems") and about the human passion for ornamentation, finally to return to the Toba and Lengua (Figs. 8, 9, 10, and 11), "whom we left on the Uru- guay."" About them, in fact, he says nothing.

It is a disappointing end for the chapter, which, in general, seems to have been written in haste, without Catlin having thought out his plan very well. Its promise as a source for insightful information on

14 Krebs/Catlin


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Fig. 7. George Catlin. SHORE OF THE URUGUAY-MAKING A SKETCH. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 5/8 x 24 7/8". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

Indian customs is not realized. Its overall credibility hinges on a loose framework of facts. For instance, the names of the towns of La Cruz and San Pedro, and of the Rio Negro, which he would have encountered as he moved south, are referred to correctly. Mosquitoes, beyond the joke Catlin makes of them, had been the torture of travelers in this often marshy area since the days of the famed explorer Alvar Nifiez Cabeza de Vaca (1490?-1557?). On the other hand, Catlin fails to give any particulars of his encounter with Bonpland, an encounter which--one could safely assume-would have been one of the high points of that trip. Catlin's omission deserves

some elaboration and will be discussed later. From an ethnographic point of view, Catlin's

account of his journey on the Parani and Uruguay rivers mixes correct observations with errors. This leads to a number of questions, both about the "facts" Catlin was seeking to convey and about the stylistic traditions and techniques he used to convey them. On the "factual" side, it is interesting that he mentions Botocudo coming for trade to Corrientes from their home in Brazil. This information makes sense in the context of what we now know of the highly complex series of migratory movements of the native groups of southern Brazil, Paraguay, and



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Fig. 8. George Catlin. A SMALL TOBOS VILLAGE. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 1/4 x 24 5/8". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

northeastern Argentina. An important motive behind these recurrent waves of migration was the religious belief, among the Tupf-Guarani, that there was a "land without evil," for which they continually searched, and indeed still do.32 More to the point, Catlin's information makes sense within a narrower historical context: according to Miguel Alberto Bar- tolome, the area of Misiones (just north of Corri- entes) was the domain, during most of the nineteenth century, of a Brazil-based group of the Ge-speaking family called Kaingang.33 This scenario makes it

possible to assume that Indians from Brazil would normally have used the waterways of the Parani and Uruguay to go on trading trips to Corrientes, as suggested by Catlin's account. But it is clear that there is a problem with the name he gives to the "tribe." As mentioned earlier, the Botocudo had their home in a territory spanning from San Salvador do Bahia, in the north, to Rio de Janeiro, in the south, at least 1000 miles from Corrientes.

Furthermore, in the two representations Catlin made of these Indians (Figs. 12 and 13), the figures

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are so dissimilar in appearance, dress, body ornamentation, and weaponry that a single cultural affil- iation looks unlikely. The lip-disks Catlin places indiscriminately in the lower lips of both male and female "Botocudo" is also problematic. Although there is no consistent practice regarding lip-disks throughout all the Ge-speaking groups, F61ix de Azara (a Spanish civil servant who traveled through Paraguay and Corrientes in the late eighteenth century) probably came close to the truth when he stated, in an essay on the Lengua, that "among all

these Indian nations, the lip-disk characterizes the male sex."34 What Catlin reported on this custom is that he discussed it with a "chief" who told him it was mainly "confined to the women."" The point is not unimportant. The artificial "sexual-dimorphism" introduced by the use of a lip-disk was (and still is) directly related, among Ge-speaking groups, to the social standing of men and women, and to the symbolic expression of values which are central to their cultures, that is: who can "explain" the world, who is a "full" person, who can hold authority and power.



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As Anthony Seeger points out, "the ornamentation of ears and mouth may well indicate the symbolic importance of 'hearing' and 'speaking' as those fac- ulties are defined by a given society."36 The Ge groups are not uniform in their use of these ornaments, and to be able to distinguish between them in a painting, the painting must be accurate in the details.37

What Catlin's haphazard reporting indicates is, in this case at least, a very limited understanding of the importance of these details. Of course, there is

the possibility that he was not reporting things he saw but feeding on some kind of pictorial tradition on the "Botocudo." In London in 1822 "A Botocudo Chieftain and his Family," had been exhibited, in person, and advertised that way.38 Catlin might have been acquainted with the trail of Botocudo representations this exhibition left behind. Thekla Hartmann has analyzed the iconography of these Indians produced by several nineteenth-century travelers and painters (Catlin is not included, but this is not surprising: his South American "period" has remained

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Fig. 11. George Catlin. A SMALL LENGUA VILLAGE. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 3/8 x 24 1/2". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

almost secret for so long)." It is highly probable that Catlin knew of the Brazilian work of the artists and travelers she mentions, such as Johann Moritz Rug- endas (1802-1858), Prince Maximilian Alexander Phillip of Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867), Johann Bap- tist von Spix (1781-1826), and Carl Friedrich Phil- lip von Martius (1794-1868). They all published illustrated accounts of their trips before the Cartoon Collection was finished (Fig. 14). But especially interesting is what Hartmann has to say about Prince Maximilian. (It might be useful to recall here that

the Prince, accompanied by the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer [1809-1893], had also traveled along the Missouri valley, more or at less the same time as Catlin, in the 1830s.) Maximilian, it is safe to assume, would have been first in a list of Catlin's references. But the curious thing is that, had Catlin relied on the engravings of the Prince's Botocudo images to complete his own paintings or to "invent" them, he would probably have been using a con- trived image, not the "real" or original one. In Hart- mann's words, "several sketches by the Prince were



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fused (by the engraver) into compositions which have little to do with what Maximilian witnessed."40 The engravers and lithographers, as Hartmann aptly notes, were not inert mediators. Through them, many European clich6s about how Indians were to be represented filtered down to the published images."4

This lifting of images out of their original context, if coupled with the lack of a critical eye for dis- tinguishing the cultural traits of a certain group of Indians, can lead to great confusion. Among the real Botocudo (those located in Eastern Brazil), according to Alfred M6traux, lip-disks were used by "men and women alike."42 Catlin's two paintings of the "Botocudo" show Indians who do not appear to

Fig. 13 (opposite, above). George Catlin. BOTOCUDO CHIEF, HIS WIFE, AND A YOUNG MAN. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 1/4 x 23 1/2". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

Fig. 14 (opposite, below). Prince Maximilian Alexander Phillip of Wied-Neuwied. SINGLE COMBATS OF THE BOTOCU- DOS. 1820. Engraving, 6 1/8 x 8 3/4" (image size), from Prince Maximilian, of Wied-Neuwied, Travels in Brazil, in the Years 1815, 1816, 1817 (London, 1820). Collection, General Research Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

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belong to the same group, as noted earlier. It is very difficult to guess whether he was copying from "nature," or very confused about the names of the tribes, or just generalizing the lip-disks to make the Indians look more bizarre. The curious and the monstrous were categories in which, as Hartmann also indicates, Indians were sometimes placed at that time.43 In any case, it is clear that as a document of ethnographic value, Catlin's "Botocudo" paintings are very problematic.

Catlin was similarly inaccurate or misleading in the names and the localities he gives for other Indian groups of northeastern Argentina. The Lengua, the Toba, and the Mocobi are not associated with the Uruguay River, on whose shores Catlin puts them.44 Before criticizing him too harshly for these confu- sions, however, it must be said that the ethnography of this particular area is extremely complicated. The different names the Spanish, the Guarani-speaking Indians, and the Criollos45 gave to the same Indian groups have hampered professional anthropologists working with historical documents.46 It must also be said in Catlin's defense, that he realized himself that he might have possibly gone wrong in naming some of his cartoons. In the 1871 catalogue he warned:

I had too much character and type constantly before me to think much of Indian names, and of those which my men picked up on the shore, correctly or incorrect- ly given, and which I had registered, I have struck out many; and for the correctness of the rest (not to mis- lead any one), I am unwilling to vouch, being under the conviction that more or less of them are wrong.47

His brother Francis, who visited him in Brussels in 1868 and kept a diary, provides very useful information on how the South American portraits and books were produced. Catlin (Fig. 15) had a working routine, waking up early and painting until it got dark. Sometimes he bought lunch from a street ven- dor, a woman who sold baked potatoes right under- neath the window of his studio. Catlin would lower a string with a handkerchief tied to it, containing some coins. The woman downstairs would take the coins and wrap the potatoes in the handkerchief. In the evenings, Francis went on to say, Catlin would invariably go to a cafe, where he wrote his "works, letters &c." The din in this crowded and lively place made it unbearable for Francis, but "Geo... being deaf," he noted, "has no annoyance."48 In this way, at a "cafe" table where he had "good gas light" and was "perfectly at ease," The Lifted and Subsided Rocks and Last Rambles were produced.49 Catlin seems to have been driven by an obsession to finish the Cartoon Collection. This included not only the South American work but also copies, made from

sketches or from memory, of the original North American portraits lost in the financial collapse of 1852. Catlin did his painting at home in a room Francis described as "dark and gloomy." He saw his brother working hard at the paintings, switching constantly from one cartoon to another, and tellingly exclaims in the diary, "poor fellow-I wish I could help him, but no use. I cant make Indians."so It must be remembered, also, that Catlin was almost deaf by 1855-the most likely year for his visit to Argen- tina-and that once there he had to communicate in Spanish, a language in which he was not proficient. The compounded effect of these limitations certainly encourages skepticism when attempting to assess the value of his ethnographic data from northeastern Argentina.

Catlin's style of writing and his artistic techniques should also be considered. From a literary point of view, it is obvious that he was not acting as a scholar. His books never carry references, and one has to take what he offers at face value. Even the cautionary measure he had resorted to in Letters and Notes, namely, adding at the beginning the testimo- nies of such prominent Americans as Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779-1851), Secretary of War, William Clark (1770-1838), Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and numerous Indian agents and others who certified the authenticity of Catlin's text, is missing in the South American books. Furthermore, he could not write within the parameters of an ethnographic tradition, as we understand it today, because such a tradition had not yet developed. The closest he came to meeting its standards was in his description of the Mandan O-Kee-Pa ceremony in the area of the Upper Missouri.5' Catlin's failure to understand the significance of some Indian traits and customs, for example, the lip-disks among the "Botocudo," was not unusual among contemporary accounts. In his chapter, "Population Argentine," Martin de Moussy, referring to descriptions of Indians by travelers, remarked about some Argentine and Brazilian groups, that they had been "already named by Azara, ...

of whom he cites only the names, after Spix and Martius, Rugendas, [Jean Baptiste] Debret, Prince Maximilian, and whose attributes do not appear clear enough to him to assign them to the first group or the second."52 Sketches and notes jotted down from a passing canoe cannot really be the basis for an elaborate depiction of Indian life, pictorial or ethnographic. Most of Catlin's paintings of South American Indians show them as they would have been seen from a ship or boat (Figs. 16 and 17).3 In this, for one thing, they could stand as "accurate" documents.



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Fig. 16. George Catlin. PAINTING THE LENGUA CHIEF. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 1/2 x 24 5/8". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

From the point of view of a pictorial tradition that could have aided Catlin's ethnographic efforts in the 1850s, again the terrain is less than firm. Indi- ans were a distant, tantalizing presence for Europe- ans-the stuff of fantasy-and certainly not a frequented topic or subject among the master painters of Western art. Indians were represented visually in Europe through the less prestigious medium of book illustration-in travel accounts, universal geographies, and collections conveying the curious and monstrous. Christian Feest and Susi Colin, among other authors, have convincingly demon- strated that the main value of this line of "ethnographic" art is as a record of changing European notions of "the Indian"-notions which were,

mostly, based on misconceptions or preconcep- tions.54 It could be argued that, from a documentary perspective, Catlin was, indeed, freer to try his hand with the marginal topic of his choice. But, paradox- ically, this same freedom meant that he was faced with another problem-namely, that of representing accurately people about whom little was known, who were-so to speak-without a context. Catlin had to "invent" a way of doing this. When Rem- brandt represented a biblical scene, for instance, the audience addressed by him knew enough about the context to interpret the scene. A man wearing a lip- disk, or a headdress of feathers, on the other hand, makes less sense because he lacks a context, unless he is made to stand as an icon of the exotic, but, then,

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this is another matter. In retrospect, we could argue that Catlin did not always solve these problems very well, but at the same time we should acknowledge that he at least tried. He was most successful when he focused on personality and the expression of character-that is, when he painted portraits of indi- vidual Indians. In other words, Catlin seems at his best when he was working within a recognizable tradition of Western art. As John Ewers has pointed out, faithful visual depictions of Indian life are more possible now, by putting together, ex post facto, a col- lage of well-certified images, than in the days when pioneer painters-good observers as they often were-traveled beyond the frontiers."

With this work of visual reconstruction in mind,

Catlin is not the most informative painter among the few who have recorded aspects of Indian life in northeastern Argentina. Compared to the illustrations made by the Jesuit priest Florifn Paucke (1719-1780) of his experiences among the Mocobi of the Argentine Chaco (Figs. 18, 19, 20, and 21), Catlin's material almost pales to insignificance. Paucke, born in Silesia, Austria, traveled with other Jesuit priests to Argentina in 1748 and worked as a missionary in the Chaco region, among the Mocobi, for eighteen years, until his order was expelled from Spanish America in 1767. Back in Austria, when the Jesuit order was eventually dissolved by Pope Clem- ent XIV in 1773, Paucke took refuge at the Cister- cian monastery in Zwettl, where his hosts prompted



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Fig. 18. Floridn Paucke. JESUIT PRIESTS, AIDED BY INDIANS, CROSSING THE PARANA RIVER. c. 1773. Watercolor. Collection, Stift Zwettl (Zwettl Monastery), Zwettl, Austria. Reproduced from Floridn Paucke, Hacia A1 y Para Acd (Una Estada Entre Los Indios Mocobfes, 1749-1767), trans. Edmundo Wernicke, 3 vols. (Buenos Aires, 1942-1944). Collection, General Research Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and 7ilden Foundations.

him to write a memoir of his experiences in the New World. That is how his manuscript on the Mocobi originated."6 In the preface to this work of 1146 pages and over 100 illustrations, Paucke warns the reader that what he has to say about the Mocobi applies to them alone and should not be generalized because-as in Europe-"ino country is identical to another in its customs and manners," and because the Indians' "ideas" varied from group to group as much as their languages and the "countries" they inhabited. He also warns that different observers might come up with different perceptions of the Mocobi, and that the merit of his work rested on its being the result of direct and prolonged personal

experience. It is not surprising that this thoughtful observer's illustrations, although rustic, are packed with detail, and provide the modem anthropologist with a wealth of information on the Mocobi.

Whether depicting a ceremony or Indian body decorations, the Silesian Jesuit was more vivid and illustrative than Catlin. Paucke's images show the Indians of the missions in all the complexity of their syncretic customs. Catlin's penchant for the "unspoiled" and "wild" did not allow for an unbi- ased ethnography of many South American Indian groups which, by the 1850s, had a long history of contact with the Spanish and the Portuguese.

Catlin's paintings of the Toba or the Chaco say 26 Krebs/Catlin


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more about Catlin himself than about those Indians (Figs. 22 and 23). To be fair to Catlin, we should try to undertand his singularity, the singularity of his purpose, of what he was intending to do. The authority of both the Indian Gallery and the Cartoon Col- lection derived, according to his rationale, from the notion that, as Paucke, he had "been there"; that he had reached out beyond the frontier and beyond prejudice, and incorporated Indians as a worthy subject for art. As if to prove the documentary value of his work, Catlin often painted himself into the picture (see Figs. 7, 11 and 16). He was as much a part of the message as were the unknown and fast disap- pearing races and cultures he was trying to legitima- tize. The reason that Paucke can be ranked higher as

an illustrator of Indian customs in northeastern Argentina is simply that he spent eighteen years in the Chaco, an experience which enabled him-as his splendid study of the Mocobi proves-to provide not only a visual representation of the Mocobi and of their material culture, but also meaningful contexts and explanations which round out the value of his testimony. In comparison to Paucke, Catlin was just a passerby, who managed, nevertheless, to communicate his enthusiasm for his topic, reacting to it without some of the inhibitions of better-trained artists.57

A final subject, and one that provides many useful insights for judging Catlin's work, is that of illustrations in newspapers and popular magazines, such

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as The Illustrated London News or Harper 's Weekly for instance, and in romances and novels dealing with Indians. Fact and fantasy were inextricably mixed in these images. The artists responsible for producing them, more often than not, had never seen an Indian, nor had they traveled in distant places. But to set Catlin's work in this last context is beyond the scope of this article.

Leaving behind these general observations on style and technique, as a body of work Catlin's South American paintings are noticeably less accomplished than his North American production (see Fig. 2). Some similarities give a naggingly uniform, almost formulaic, appearance to the works he painted in the Argentine northeast. The same type of

bow, the same collars of beads, the same ankle adornments, reappear in the portraits of the Chaco, Payagua, and Toba. Moccasins which have a distinctly North American look are placed on the feet of the "Botocudo" (see Figs. 12 and 13) and the quivers and bows in Figures 10, 12 and 22 are reminiscent of those used by Indians Catlin had seen in his North American travels. To counter these criticisms, one should perhaps return to Francis Catlin's diary and recall the environment and the circumstances in which the paintings were finished. As John Ewers has observed of the North American collection, each painting has to be judged separately." In this sense, the scene of Lengua Indians (even if the name is wrong) ascending the rapids of the Uruguay River

The American Art Journal/Volume XXII I Number 4 29


""' '-:?**I: ......,..,.. ???? ?"::.' :] ?: ????? ".r?1: r.? ?r .I i. ?? ?~?:';I ;"- '" ' :: ~:.I: .. :i? ??~:fIi~ ??? ?-???; ~" ,..?.,. . 'il; i;i-.?. .X: ?"*" *fGLi i -* ** "~~ ?? ' ...,. :irr*Er:":T:::::: .' ;; i :'':: ii~~l: ):" ."~ ...~ ??????..-l:2::::::;i;; ;??.: '~: '?" " "*? '" '

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Fig. 23. George Catlin. SPEARING BY MOONLIGHT-CHACO. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 1/2 x 24 3/8". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

(Fig. 24), could have, because it shows how they did it, an obvious ethnographic value. The Argentine northeast, as noted earlier, especially the area of the Uruguay River, is sadly lacking in visual representations of Indians. This being the case, further research on specific groups should help bring out the documentary value of Catlin's paintings.

So far, there is almost no analytical literature on the Cartoon Collection. Really the only work that one could cite is Marvin Ross's introduction to the edition he put together of Catlin's Life Amongst the Indians and Last Rambles (1959).59 This is a valu- able book because it gathers in a single volume almost everything Catlin wrote on South America and reproduces nearly all of the surviving paintings of South American subject matter. By doing so, Ross brought this "lost period" back to the attention of

scholars, noting aptly that it is "only by the publica- tion of all Catlin's significant work and the evalua- tion of it by anthropologists and art historians that we can arrive at a true estimate of this remarkable man."6 But in his introduction Ross never doubts that Catlin went to South America and is seemingly unaware of the many problems posed by the region's complex ethnohistory. He claims, though, to have compared Catlin's paintings with "a large number of artifacts and photographs, collected about 1900 among some of the same [South American] tribes" and to have found "to my satisfaction" that Catlin "not only correctly rendered the Indians themselves, but had observed and painted faithfully their manner of dress and the ornaments they wore."'' This is a very optimistic statement, one which Ross does not substantiate. Collections of photographs of South

Krebs/Catlin 30


'ail

Fig. 24. George Catlin. LENGUA INDIANS ASCENDING THE RAPIDS OF THE RIO URUGUAY. Between 1854 and 1869. Oil on paperboard, 18 11/16 x 24 13/16". Paul Mellon Collection, National Gallery ofArt.

American Indians-and Ross does not direct us to a precise reference-can say many things to different observers. What is difficult to avoid noticing when working with such collections is that Indian ornamentation and "manner of dress" are not static but tend to vary, much in the same way as fashions in our own cosmopolitan culture do. How, then, could Ross be so certain in his comments? What groups, what periods, was he comparing and assimilating?

Regarding the change of style between the Indian Gallery and the Cartoon Collection, Ross, drawing from Catlin's own words, has this to say in his book:

Catlin found, while painting in the jungle, that he must devise a different method of working. In the 1830's, when he first recorded the Indians in paint, he used canvas, which had to be rolled up and packed while

traveling. This was not successful in the humid climate of the South American jungles where paint on the canvas dried slowly, and so he switched to Bristol board, which was more easily packed and carried and on which paint dried more quickly.62

But it is just as important to relate Catlin's change of technique to his concern to have his paintings of In- dian life taken as documents, as representations that were true to the facts. If we examine the way Indians are shown in the Cartoon Collection, we notice how much the static Indian figures, lined up flatly in the Bristol boards, resemble those in a studio photograph. The technique of photography-one that was supposed to reproduce reality-had become available after the Indian Gallery was completed, and its possibilities for science were extolled by no less a figure than Humboldt, one of Catlin's mentors.63 It is



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Fig. 25. Jean Ldon Pallibre. INDIOS DEL GRAN CHACO (REPUBLICA ARGENTINA). 1864-1865. Lithograph, 7 7/16 x 12 15/16". Private collection.

plausible to think that Catlin might have tried to mimic a photographic style in his later collection of paintings, borrowing from the new technique's pres- tige in an attempt to make the paintings look more documentary. Other painters of Indians, such as John Mix Stanley (1814-1872) for instance, used photography as an aid. Jean Leon Pallibre did, too, and it is interesting in this context to compare two lithographs he made of Indians of the Argentine Chaco, after having traveled there in the 1850s. One shows a couple in a canoe (Fig. 25). The setting and the atmosphere are of a kind with other European, romanticized, depictions of Indian life. The other, painted after a photographic original, shows a group of Indians staring at the photographer-painter, and is very different in style: bare and direct (Fig. 26).64 In fact, the two lithographs appear as if they are the work of different artists. Catlin seems to have been

aware of the value of photography for his documentary work. In a passage from Last Rambles, referring to a dance scene in a Zurumati village, he exclaims: "And oh, that a photographic impression could have been taken of this singular pretty group, which would have vanished like a flock of antelopes had I attempted to have made a sketch of it."65 When comparing Pallibre's "fictional" and "documentary" representations of Chaco Indians, and Catlin's own striking portraits of North American Indians (when his models posed for him, and he could gradually incorporate numerous details to the canvas) with the many nondescript images of the Cartoon Collection, one wishes he had depended more on "photographic" impressions, as mentioned in the passage just quoted.

And what about Catlin's narratives of his trips in South America? Although he was the first to draw

32 Krebs/Catlin


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:

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,

iti

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Fig. 26. Jean Lion Palli re. TOBAS. INDIOS DEL GRAN CHACO (REPUBLICA ARGENTINA). Reproduced from Leon Palliere: Escenas americanas, reproduccion de cuadros, aquarelles y bosquejos (Buenos Aires, 1980). Photograph, Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, California.


IX.

Fig. 27. Rodolfo Kratzenstein, after Carlos Pellegrini. A. BONPLAN (AIMP BONPLAND). Lithograph, 5 15/16 x 5 1/8", from Revista del Plata (November, 1854). Private collection.

attention to them, Ross did not thoroughly examine this material. Assuming for a moment the worst possible case-that Catlin invented these texts altogether-what could have been his most likely sources? Let us take, for example, our main concern in this article, the trips in northeastern Argentina. There was plenty of printed material available on this area by 1850. Without pretending to cover the entire field, the obvious choices in book form are the works by Alcide d'Orbigny (1835-1847 and 1836), Woodbine Parish (1839), and John P. and William P. Robertson (1843).67

Alcide d'Orbigny's Voyage dans L'Amdrique

M ridionale is the best and most detailed account of the Argentine Indians published before 1850. This work includes a classification of Indian groups by race and language which stands as a pioneering effort of a considerably high standard. D'Orbigny, besides, had spent almost a year in the province of Corrientes during the extensive travels in which he collected his ethnographic information.

The works by Woodbine Parish and the Robert- son brothers are less ambitious in scope but very pertinent for the history and geography of the area of Catlin's journey. Both were published by John Mur- ray, in London, around the time Catlin was there. Murray was a friend of Catlin and had recommended that he publish Letters and Notes on his own, so that he would not have to share the profits.

Even supposing that Catlin was acquainted with these authors and allowing for his shortcomings (no notes, no references, no "certificates" as in Letters and Notes) and for all his mistakes and omissions, Catlin's narrative of his trips in northeastern Argen- tina, although superficial and random, reads as if based on an authentic personal experience. No obvious instance of plagiarism can be isolated; the itinerary is reasonable and could have been followed using the means of transportation cited; and Catlin, although nearly deaf, was still strong and fit enough to endure it."

This is a favorable and perhaps too optimistic reading of Catlin's own story. It has to be balanced against the rather serious doubts and questions which have been raised already. First, there is the question prompted by a simple bird's-eye view of the entire South American "period." As noted at the beginning of this article, the itineraries Catlin lists in the catalogue of his New York exhibition are extensive. The first of these takes Catlin and his assistant Cesar Bolla to the Orinoco and Amazon basins, from the Amazonian rain forest across the Andes to Peru; from there by ship to San Francisco, and farther north on board the Sally Anne to the Bering Strait. Back in the United States, Catlin and Bolla continue traveling on horseback across the Rockies and finally to the Yucatan, where they part company. The second trip, which looks more self-contained and feasible, takes Catlin to Rio de Janeiro and the Rio de la Plata, where Juan Alzar comes into the picture as his guide. We should also remember that while in Argentina, besides traveling in the northeast, he ven- tured across the Pampas on horseback, and by ship, to Patagonia.69

It is one thing is to merely list these rather ambitious traveling routes, and quite another to follow them on a map, bearing in mind Catlin's often con-

34 Krebs/Catlin


tradictory timetables, and the considerable difficulties involved in traversing some of the areas adduced. The whole framework looks shaky, if seen from this perspective.

Second, Catlin's travels in Argentina across the Pampas and to Patagonia appear, after close exami- nation, to be as ambiguous in terms of the support- ing evidence, as the one we have just reviewed along the Parand and Uruguay rivers.70 Of these two trips, the single most important piece of evidence that could help to prove Catlin's presence in Argentina is a Tehuelche-English vocabulary, which he collected through an interpreter while "wind-bound" on the northern shore of the Strait of Magellan.71 The vocabulary shows some reassuring parallels with one published later by George Musters (1873)72 but it has so many similarities with the lesser-known vocabulary published by Dr. Theophilus Schmid, catechist of the Patagonian Missionary Society, in 1860, seven years before Last Rambles, that it is highly likely that Catlin borrowed from it.73

And last, there is the question of the visit to Aim6 Bonpland (Fig. 27), mentioned earlier. Strangely enough, Catlin gives no description in his narrative of the encounter with the old botanist. The meeting, though, is mentioned on at least three sep- arate occasions by Catlin, as if it had taken place: in the itinerary of the 1871 catalogue; in a letter to his English patron Sir Thomas Phillipps (November 3, 1857)74; and in the Appendix to The Lifted and Sub- sided Rocks ofAmerica. In that book one reads:

... whilst in Uruguay, in 1856, at the residence of the Baron Bonpland, to whom the Baron de Humboldt had given me a letter of introduction, I received a letter from the Baron de Humboldt ...75

Leaving aside the fact that Bonpland was not a "Baron," the date of this letter is problematic: June 9, 1856. How did Catlin get hold of that letter if, according to our assumption, it is most likely that he was traveling past Bonpland's place around January or February of the same year?

If one moves the dates of the Argentine itineraries forward, to allow for the time frame implied by this letter, then when would the trips on the Pampas and to Patagonia have to be placed, considering that Catlin, in his own words, left the country at the end of 1856? If Catlin's arrival in Buenos Aires occurred later than December 15, 1855, the hypothetical meeting with Lieutenant Page has to be ruled out, and the descriptions of hot weather and the low level of the waters in the upper Parand River-details that are otherwise credible---do not seem to fit.

Moving the trip to Argentina ahead to 1858,

when, according to the correspondence with Sir Thomas Phillipps, Catlin might have been abroad, will not do either.76 Bonpland died in May, 1858.77

One serious possibility is that Catlin never met Bonpland, and never received the 1856 letter from Humboldt. This also implies that Catlin could have invented the letter. Bonpland was certainly very active in 1855 and 1856. He used to move from the establishment in Santa Ana on the west bank of the Uruguay River-where the encounter with Catlin supposedly took place-across the river to Sdo Borja, in Brazil, where he had another estancia or ranch, and also to Montevideo, where he would peri- odically collect a pension from the French government. El Comercio reported in its issue of February 2, 1856:

Amado Bonpland, the learned naturalist and friend of our Province [of Corrientes] has written to our Gover- nor from Montevideo, informing him he has collected several minerals in that State, with the worthy idea of donating them, on his return, to the local museum that is being established under his direction. He will also bring trees and seeds of plants unknown to us, to grow and acclimatize them here ...

This piece of news was followed in the issue of February 24 with the information that another letter had been received by His Excellency, the Governor of Corrientes, from Bonpland, then on his way up the Uruguay River with his load of minerals and plants. "We cannot wait," wrote the unknown chron- icler of the local column, "to see the gentle naturalist among us." Had Catlin tried to visit Bonpland in January or February, he would probably have found that the Frenchman was elsewhere collecting his pension and items for the museum. The chances for both men meeting appear as very slim.

Another curious thing about Humboldt's 1856 letter is that Thomas Donaldson publishes a tran- scription of it in his memoir, without making it clear whether he saw the actual document, or was just quoting it from Catlin's Lifted and Subsided Rocks.78 Donaldson reproduces other documents in facsim- ile, but not this particular one.

What motives might have led Catlin into this possible deception? An answer could be the appearance of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's six-volume His- torical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the North American Indians (Philadelphia, 1851-1857) or, rather, Catlin's first public acknowledgment of it, some years later.79 Relations between Catlin and Schoolcraft had deteriorated after the artist refused to illustrate that very same work when it was still in



project form. In the years before anthropology was an established discipline, its self-styled practitioners and pioneers had to face the difficult task of cajoling the government and private patrons into providing financial support and recognition. In the United States, until the Smithsonian Institution was founded in 1846, and later on, the Bureau of Amer- ican Ethnology, there were no museums or specific academic positions which would allow for a career in anthropology.80 A special appropriation from Congress was the haven for which Catlin, School- craft, Stanley, and others of their kind lobbied-and in this particular art Schoolcraft ("a man," Catlin said "whose easy task was to sit in his parlour in Washington" in the "enjoyment of a salary with per- quisites to compose a book from the gatherings of others"81) had the upper hand. In the letter in question, Humboldt warns Catlin that the book by Schoolcraft, published "under the authority of the Government of the United States," puts in doubt the truth of Catlin's descriptions of the Mandan ceremo- nies. Catlin had visited this North American tribe in the 1830s, and vividly described and painted its rites, in all their rawness and apparent cruelty. Hum- boldt informed Catlin in his 1856 letter that School- craft undermined his reputation by "distinctly saying" the descriptions "are contrary to facts, and that they are the works of your imagination, & c."82 He then suggested that Catlin write to Prince Maxi- milian, who had traveled through the same Mandan village accompanied by the painter Bodmer, and ask him for a letter of support. This letter, Humboldt ended, if placed together with Catlin's own defense before the United States government, could not fail to induce "some legislative act, to do you justice."83

Catlin did precisely that, in 1868. His presenta- tion to Congress carried the prestigious names of Humboldt (who had died in 1859), of Bonpland (who had also died, in 1858), and of Prince Maxmil- ian to bolster his case-a case, one should add, which was not only an indictment of Schoolcraft's book, but also of the government's policy toward the Indians. This is all based on the letter Catlin claims to have collected at the Bonpland residence, in 1856. His letter to the Prince, though, is dated December 2, 1866, in Brussels. No less than ten years had passed between Humboldt's peremptory advice and Catlin's reaction.

Coming to a confident conclusion about whether Catlin did or did not go to South America will remain difficult unless unequivocal evidence of his travels is produced-evidence coming from sources other than his own paintings and narratives. Until this happens, only conjectures-more or less

reasonable--can be presented, in favor and against. We do know that most of the trips he claims to have made were feasible. We also know that the string of ethnographic data he blends into the South Ameri- can books was already accessible in print. Certainly, he could have traveled in his imagination, simply by reading books in a Paris or Brussels library.84 The possibility that he combined fact and fiction is very likely.

There is, yet, something else instructive about Catlin's "lost period": it reveals that the kind of questioning of his credibility has shifted significant- ly. His contemporary critics, Schoolcraft and others, accused him not of inventing itineraries but of mis- representing Indian character. What Catlin had to say about it was too good to be accepted as real or regarded as accurate and true to the facts. His "documents" were contested because they challenged the dominant way in which Indian cultures were per- ceived at that time-as backward, savage, and almost incapable of "rational thinking.""5 Catlin explicitly questioned these judgments. He advocat- ed direct personal experience and "living amongst them," before coming to conclusions. In Last Ram- bles, he wrote:

When the science of human ethnology, which has been for some thousands of years travelling to the west with the advance of civilization, gets quite around the globe it will probably be seen whether there has not been some error at its starting-point-error as its basis, and, consequently, error heaped upon error as it has ad- vanced. Whether erroneous dogmas, travelling with the wave of civilization, have not been too much the established rule by which all things ethnological in the New World should be measured; and whether true ethnological knowledge of a people is best drawn from an independent study of those people and their habits, or from the application of an ethnological education drawn from books, made from books, with all the dog- matical rules that have been made for, and applied to, other peoples?86

This sounds very reasonable, by today's standards. We have now shied away from believing, as many once did, that Indians are exemplars of a savage phase of human evolution. Anthropologists, as Cat- lin foresaw, are expected these days to draw their knowledge of a people from an "independent study" and from being there. Hence our brand of concern regarding his South American work: we have grounds to suspect that, against his own prescribed method, Catlin might not have been "there" to begin with--or at least not to the extent he would have us believe.

In presenting a document of Indian life, Catlin was not blessed with a supportive audience. In the

36 Krebs/Catlin


nineteenth century, he was doubted to the point that his facts were considered fiction. Ethnography, as Catlin practiced it, had few followers then, and was not a legitimate occupation. For this reason he worked in a financial void and his career was a failure. Today, we think differently about what consti- tutes a document and are an appreciative audience for Catlin's initial and main work: the Indian Gallery

and Letters and Notes. We are also more aware of some of the problems encountered by artists and writers who attempt to portray other cultures. If the quaint products of the "lost period," the South American years, do belong to the realm of fantasy and the imagination, they are at least a true document of Catlin's plight, of the isolation that bred them.

I would like to express my gratitude to Tom L. Freudenheim, Assis- tant Secretary for Museums, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., for facilitating, in many ways, my initial research on Catlin. I would also like to thank Veronica and Marcelo Elissetche, for their friendship and hospitality in Washington, D.C., and to Fundacion Antorchas, of Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the generous scholarship that made my studies at Oxford possible. For discussing this topic with me, I am grateful to William C. Stur- tevant, Curator of North American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institu- tion, John C. Ewers, Ethnologist Emeritus, Smithsonian Institution, and Brian W. Dippie, Professor of History, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia. Wolfson College, Oxford, and the Inter- faculty Committee for Latin American Studies, Oxford University, awarded me a travel grant in November, 1989, with which I was able to follow Catlin's route in northeastern Argentina. For their support, I am sincerely thankful. I would like to acknowledge Bonifacio P. del Carril of Emec6 Edi- tores S.A., Buenos Aires, and Karin Rackl of the Embassy of the Re- public of Austria, Washington, D.C., for their kind assistance. Finally, I would also like to thank Jane Van N. Turano and Jayne A. Kuchna, editors of The American Art Journal, for their thorough- ness and for many helpful observations. 1. George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, 2 vols. (1841; New York, 1973), vol. 1, pp. 2, 4. 2. Joseph Harrison's widow, Sarah, donated Catlin's collection to the Smithsonian Institution in 1879. It is now at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 3. The most recent and comprehensive works on Catlin are William Truettner, The Natural Man Observed. A Study of Catlin's Indian Gallery (Washington, D.C., 1979); and Brian W. Dippie, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage (Omaha, Nebr., 1990). 4. The Cartoon Collection numbers over six hundred paintings. Approximately half are reproductions of the original Indian Gal- lery. According to Brian Dippie, Catlin and His Contemporaries, pp. 355-356,

Catlin had copied most of his original portraits between 1848 and 1852 using a photographic lens (camera lucida) to reproduce heads and torsos, adding the bottom halves from sketches made, he claimed, from life. These... were stored separately from his original Indian Gallery and thus escaped his English creditors.... In the 1860s he transferred the outlines to paste- board panels consistent in size and style with his South Ameri- can cartoons; thus Catlin's "new" or second Indian collection, numbering over six hundred paintings when he exhibited them in 1870 to signal his return from obscurity.

In 1910 the collection was purchased from Catlin's daughters by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1965

the Museum sold it to Paul Mellon who, in turn, donated the bulk of it to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Twenty-four of the works are at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia. Others are scattered in museum collections throughout the United States.

The books derived from the South American trips are Life Amongst the Indians (London, 1861); Last Rambles Amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes (New York, 1867); and The Lifted and Subsided Rocks of America (London, 1870). The first borrows from his previous texts on his experiences in the North American frontier and also includes tales of travels in the Orinoco and Amazon basins. The second gives a different version of the latter travels and recounts the story of his journeys in Argen- tina. Lifted and Subsided Rocks draws from the previous two and includes Catlin's theories on the origin of the Andes and the origin and distribution of "races" in North and South America. 5. See Last Rambles, pp. 46-77. According to George Catlin, Cat- lin's Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe, 2 vols. (New York, 1848), vol. 1, p. 39, one of Catlin's friends in London, during the 1840s, was Sir Francis Bond Head, who had gone to Argentina in the 1820s with the purpose of starting a mining company in that country. Catlin's and Sir Francis's projects were very similar. See Sir Francis Bond Head, Journeys Across the Pampas and Among the Andes (London, 1828). 6. Harold McCracken, George Catlin and the Old Frontier (New York, 1959), pp. 201-209; and Lloyd Haberly, Pursuit of the Hori- zon

Documents

Carlos Krebs George Catlin and SouthAmerica