Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/419

Rh no pecuniary aid, governmental or individual, in the prosecution of his work." He accomplished it with remarkable thoroughness.

He followed this work for forty-two years, from 1829 to 1871, and during that time traveled through the wildernesses of North and South America, and visited Europe, making his name known everywhere. During eight years, from 1829 till 1838, he lived among the Indians, traders, trappers, and hunters of the West.

In 1830 and 1831 he accompanied Governor Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to treaties held with the Winnebagoes and Menomonees, the Shawnees and Sacs and Foxes, and in these interviews began the series of his Indian paintings. In 1831 he visited, with Governor Clark, the Kansas, and returned to St. Louis. In 1832 he painted the portraits of Black Hawk and his warriors, prisoners of war. In the same year, on his second journey, he ascended the Missouri, by steamer, to Fort Union, mouth of the Yellowstone, and descended the Missouri to St. Louis in a canoe with two men, steering it the whole distance of two thousand miles with his own paddle, visiting and painting ten tribes. Of these tribes the most important were the Manclans, to whom he devoted more time and labor than any other in North America. In 1833 he ascended the Platte to Fort Laramie, visiting villages of the Pawnees, Omahas, and Otoes, and seeing many Arapahoes and Cheyennes, and rode to the shores of the Great Salt Lake, while the Mormons were yet building their temple at Nauvoo. In 1834 he accompanied a regiment of mounted dragoons to the Comanches and other Southwestern tribes, making an extensive journey and seeing many Indians of various tribes; then from Fort Gibson, Ark., on his horse "Charley," without a road or a track, rode to St. Louis, a distance of five hundred and fifty miles, guided by his pocket compass, and swimming the rivers as he met them. In 1835 he ascended the Mississippi to the Falls of St. Anthony, saw the Mississippi Sioux, the Ojibways and Saukees or Sacs, and descended the Mississippi to St. Louis in a bark canoe with one man, steering with his own paddle. In 1836 he made a second visit to the Falls of St. Anthony, steaming from Buffalo to Green Bay, ascending the Fox and descending the Wisconsin Rivers, six hundred miles in a bark canoe to Prairie du Chien, and thence by canoe four hundred and fifty miles to the Falls of St. Anthony. Thence he ascended the St. Peter's to the "Pipestone Quarry" on the Coteau des Prairies, and descended the St. Peter's in a canoe, with a companion, to the Falls of St. Anthony, and from them a second time to St. Louis in a bark canoe, nine hundred miles, steering with his own paddle. In 1837 he went to the coast of Florida to see the Seminoles and Euchees, and in the same years made a voyage from New York to Charleston to paint