The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (31 page)

Chopin himself came backstage afterward. Greeting Moreau, according to one account, he exclaimed in French, “Good, my child, good, very good. Let me shake your hand once more.” But Moreau’s sister Clara would later say Chopin had placed his hands on the boy’s head, as though conferring a benediction, and said, “I predict that you will become the king of pianists.”

La Revue Musicale
praised the young American for “the neatness and elegance of his playing,” and predicted that in time to come his fame would equal that of any pianist. Back home the
New Orleans Courier
reported on the front page that 1,200 people belonging “chiefly to the upper ranks of society” had been in attendance and that a “glorious future” was in store for “this young and interesting child of Louisiana.” A brilliant career had been launched in memorable fashion.

Midway into April, three weeks or so after the premiere appearance of General Tom Thumb at the Salle de Concert, and two weeks following the Gottschalk debut, George Catlin and his party of Iowa Indians took up residence at the Victoria Hotel on the rue Chauveau-Lagarde, just behind the Church of the Madeleine. Besides the more than five hundred paintings of his Indian Gallery, Catlin had brought with him an enormous collection of Indian artifacts—tomahawks, scalping knives, rattles, drums, skulls, cooking utensils, and four complete wigwams—making altogether eight tons of paintings and artifacts packed in giant crates.

Catlin’s story was like that of no other American artist. A sturdy, clean-shaven, rather stern-looking man of medium height and with a granite set to his jaw, he was part painter, part scholar, part explorer, dreamer, entrepreneur, and showman. He had been born in Pennsylvania, started out to be a lawyer, then quit to paint, specializing at first in miniature portraits. Still, like Samuel Morse, he had longed to be a history painter. When in Philadelphia he saw a visiting delegation of western Indians in full regalia, it was, as he said, enough to inspire “a whole lifetime of enthusiasm.”

In 1832, as cholera raged in Paris and Morse was laboring on his
Gallery of the Louvre
, James Fenimore Cooper faithfully keeping him company, George Catlin, at age thirty-six, had been on his way up the
Missouri River. His courageous mission, to record “a vast country of green fields, where men are all red,” had been influenced almost certainly by Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, and
The Prairie
especially. Over a stretch of nearly eight years, traveling by steamboat, canoe, and horseback, and often alone, Catlin studied and lived with and painted forty-five of the tribes of the Great Plains. He had gone up the Missouri as far north as Fort Union and down the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans. No artist had attempted the subject on such a scale or kept at it so long or with such intense commitment. He painted portraits, landscapes, scenes of buffalo hunts, violent Indian games, and religious ceremonies— “the proud and heroic elegance of savage society, in a state of pure and original nature, beyond the reach of civilization,” as he put it. He knew there was little time left before a whole way of life would vanish, corrupted or altogether destroyed, and which he was determined to “rescue from oblivion” with his brush and pen. He also hoped to make himself famous and earn a living sufficient to support his wife, Clara, and their children.

At no point had Catlin benefited from government or private support for his mission. In 1839 he offered his entire collection for purchase by the United States government, but to no avail. So he sailed for England, taking the collection with him, hoping for better luck. Clara and the children would follow later.

The paintings went on display at London’s Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. Catlin gave lectures, and for added effect often dressed as an Indian. He took the paintings on tour to other cities, all the while going deeper in debt. When two or three delegations of Ojibwas and Iowas showed up in London of their own accord, intending to exhibit themselves, Catlin invited them to join him and strongly resented—then and later—those who denounced him for exploiting the Indians.

The “real” Indians added greatly to the show. Their translator, Jeffrey Doraway, also became part of the company, and Catlin enlarged the gallery by doing portraits and drawings of each of the Iowas. When the Ojibwas announced they had had enough of London and sailed for home, Catlin, who had been in England for years, decided it was time to move the whole enterprise to Paris. His family, meanwhile, had also become
part of the entourage. What kind of reception he expected to receive in Paris is not known.

It was well after dark when they reached their hotel. Not until the next morning did the Iowas, leaning from their windows as far as they dared, get a first real look at the city, and the spectacle of so many red painted and crested heads on high, greeting the start of the day, quickly drew an excited crowd in the street below.

The servants in the house were at first alarmed [Catlin wrote], and the good landlady smiled at their unexpected appearance, and she roared with laughter when she was informed that the beds were removed from their rooms, that they spread their own robes and, in preference, slept upon the floor. All in the house, however, got attached to them in a few days.

Climbing aboard an omnibus, they toured the city, rolled by the Tuileries Palace, the Louvre, crossed over the Seine and back on the Pont Neuf, and wound up at the Hôtel de Ville—City Hall—where several thousand people were waiting for a glimpse. “There was a great outcry when they landed and entered the hall, and the crowd was sure not to diminish whilst they were within,” wrote Catlin, thrilled by the reception. Inside, champagne was uncorked and the
préfet de police
presented the chief of the Iowa delegation, Mew-hew-she-kaw—White Cloud—with a silver medal.

“My father,” responded White Cloud in a brief speech, “we were astonished at what we saw in London, where we have been, but we think your village is much the most beautiful.”

Others in the delegation included Ruton-ye-we-ma—Strutting Pigeon—the wife of White Cloud; Se-non-ty-yah—Little Wolf—a warrior; his wife, O-kee-wee-me—Female Bear that Walks on the Back of Another—and their infant daughter, wrapped in a papoose. In all there were seven men and a boy, four women and two infant girls. Their daily itinerary, their names and appearance, were news everywhere.

The Iowas, reported
Galignani’s Messenger,
were “of fine stature, pleasing features, and mild manners,” inferring that no one need be afraid.

Phrenologically they have all the indications of superior faculties. They are a deep copper color inclining to red, but with features many Europeans might envy. Their costumes are picturesque and even elegant. They appear devotedly attached to their chief, and are in their own way exceedingly religious, never partaking of food without praying for the blessings of the great spirit, and returning thanks for the benefits they receive.

While the Indians continued their sightseeing, drawing crowds at every stop, Catlin moved his exhibition into the cavernous Salle Valentino on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The paintings were put up side by side, filling every foot of wall space. One of the strongest, most vivid of the portraits was that of Little Wolf, his face painted bright red, his eyes, nose, and mouth encircled by a band of orange and green, his shoulders all but concealed under a heavy necklace of giant grizzly bear claws, beside which the presidential gold medal he wore looked all but lost. In another portrait a Mandan chief, Four Bears, stood proudly in full regalia, a magnificent headdress of eagle feathers reaching to the ground, his long deer-skin shirt decorated with accounts of his bravery in war. Describing Four Bears arriving the day of his first sitting for the painting, Catlin had said, “No tragedian ever trod the stage, nor gladiator ever entered the Roman Forum, with more grace and manly dignity. …”

There was a portrait of a handsome Cheyenne woman, She Who Bathes Her Knees, wearing a dress of mountain sheepskins embroidered with beautiful blue quillwork, but also scenes of gruesome self-torture ceremonies, war dances, scalp dances, a dying buffalo in its agony, bright red blood spurting from its wounds, and a tallgrass prairie ablaze, the swirling black sky above brushed on by Catlin with fitting fury.

At the center of the gallery, to help set the scene, he had placed a huge Crow wigwam. When he said later that Paris had never seen an exhibition remotely like it, he was by no means exaggerating.

Of the many notables of the day—members of the king’s inner circle, eminent scientists, writers, painters, newspaper publishers—who were captivated by Catlin’s paintings and the contingent of Iowas, none responded
with such spontaneous interest or obvious pleasure as the king himself. Louis-Philippe, Queen Marie-Amélie, and the royal family received the Americans at the Tuileries Palace on the afternoon of April 22, 1845, the Iowas, as Catlin noted proudly, “in a full blaze of color …

all with their wampum and medals on, with their necklaces of grizzly bear claws, their shields and bows and quivers, their lances and war clubs, and tomahawks and scalping knives … their painted buffalo robes wrapped around them. …

Louis-Philippe, “in the most free and familiar manner,” launched at once into conversation in English—with Jeffrey Doraway translating— about his own experiences in America, only this time with even greater enthusiasm than usual and to the delight of his guests from the Great Plains.

“Tell these good fellows I am glad to see them,” he said by way of greeting, “that I have been in many of the wigwams of Indians of America when I was a young man, and they treated me everywhere kindly, and I love them for it.”

He talked of his adventures in the American wilderness half a century before as though it had been only the other day. “Tell them I was amongst the Senecas near Buffalo … in the wigwams of the chiefs—that I was amongst the Shawnees and Delawares on the Ohio.”

In the winter of 1797–98, Louis-Philippe and his two younger brothers, on their own, starting from Pittsburgh, had descended the length of the Ohio River to the Mississippi in a small boat, then continued down the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans, just as Catlin had. He, too, had been the guest of Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws, smoked a friendly pipe, and learned some of their language.

“This,” wrote Catlin, “made the Indians stare, and the women, by a custom of their country, placed their hands over their mouths, as they issued groans of surprise.”

“Tell them also, Jeffrey, that I am pleased to see their wives and children they have with them here, and glad also to show them my family, who are now nearly all around me,” said Louis-Philippe, who then introduced,
one by one, his wife, sister, two sons and their wives, and two grandsons.

With ceremony befitting a head of state, the king then presented a gold medal to Chief White Cloud, and silver medals to each of the warriors. Then everyone moved to the grand ballroom, where the Indians, seating themselves in the center of the floor, began singing and beating drums, then broke into an eagle dance, flailing their weapons.

The dance ended with resounding applause, and the Iowas resumed their sitting positions. Then the drums beat again, and louder now and with increased tempo. Little Wolf, throwing aside his buffalo robe, sprang from the floor with his tomahawk and shield, “and sounding the frightful war-whoop, which called his warriors around him,” as Catlin wrote.

Nothing could have been more thrilling or picturesque than the scene at the moment presented of this huge and terrible-looking warrior, frowning death and destruction on his brow, as he brandished the very weapons he had used in deadly combat, and in his jumps and sudden starts, seemed threatening with instant use again! The floors and ceilings of the Palace shook with the weight of their steps, and its long halls echoed and vibrated the shrill-sounding notes of the war-whoop.

Suddenly Little Wolf stopped, and shaking the tomahawk overhead, ordered the others to stop. He advanced toward the king.

My Great Father [he said], I present to you my tomahawk with which I killed one of my enemies … and you see the blood remaining on its blade. … My Father, since we came among the white people, we have been convinced that peace is better than war, and I place the tomahawk in your hands—I fight no more.

As he watched from the side, Catlin kept thinking of how this king in his life, in his journey down the Ohio and Mississippi, had seen more of
the great western regions of America, and the ways of its people, than all but one in a thousand Americans ever had or would. (Alexis de Tocqueville, as recently as 1835, in the first volume of his
Democracy in America
, had described the Mississippi as “the most magnificent place God ever prepared for men to dwell in,” but reminded his readers it was still “a vast wilderness.”)