Existing comment:
George Catlin and his Indian Gallery in Europe
George Catlin eventually painted more than five hundred portraits and genre scenes to create his Indian Gallery, an installation of paintings and artifacts now largely in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He initially intended his Indian Gallery to encourage opposition to Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act by demonstrating native lifeways for a white, eastern audience. Despite its initial popularity Catlin's enterprise lost money, and in 1841 he shipped the entire collection to London. There he eventually hired a group of Ojibwe (Anishinaabe) Indians to perform for British audiences. In 1844 Catlin contracted with one of P. T. Barnum's managers to replace them with a group of thirteen Iowa (Báxoǰe) Indians to who performed their traditional dances and demonstrated feats of horsemanship. In 1845 the entire entourage traveled to Paris where the Iowa danced for the French king, Louis-Philippe, who gave each of them a gold or silver medal stamped with his likeness. At this time Humboldt met Catlin and toured the Louvre Museum with the Iowa -- the only time the Prussian naturalist encountered indigenous people from the United States. |