The first and freshest pictorial record of Indian life west of the Mississippi was made during the 1830s by iron-willed George Catlin. The civilized world had been taught to regard the Indians either as demigods (by James Fenimore Cooper) or as demihumans (by frontiersmen's reports). Catlin showed them as they were and as they lived. His pictures came as a revelation to Manhattan, London and Paris.
This year, more than a century later, Catlin's triumph was again underlined by a touring exhibition of his work in Europe. Sponsored by the U.S. Information Agency and (and supplied by the Smithsonian Institution), it arrived...
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