Volume 2

Letters and notes on the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians. : Written during eight years' travel amongst the wildest tribes of Indians in North America, in 1832, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 and 39. In two volumes, with four hundred illustrations, carefully engraved from his original paintings.

  • Catlin, George, 1796-1872.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters and notes on the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians. : Written during eight years' travel amongst the wildest tribes of Indians in North America, in 1832, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38 and 39. In two volumes, with four hundred illustrations, carefully engraved from his original paintings. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    by white men and by Indians—par accident ; and yet many more where it is voluntarily done for the purpose of getting a fresh crop of grass, for the grazing of their horses, and also for easier travelling during the next sum- mer, when there will be no old grass to lie upon the prairies, entangling the feet of man and horse, as they are passing over them. Over the elevated lands and prairie bluffs, where the grass is thin and short, the fire slowly creeps with a feeble flame, which one can easily step over (PLATE 127); where the wild animals often rest in their lairs until the flames almost burn their noses, when they will reluctantly rise, and leap over it, and trot off amongst the cinders, where the fire has past and left the ground as black as jet. These scenes at night become indescribably beau- tiful, when their flames are seen at many miles distance, creeping over the sides and tops of the bluffs, appearing to be sparkling and brilliant chains of liquid fire (the hills being lost to the view), hanging suspended in graceful festoons from the skies. _ But there is yet another character of burning prairies (PLATE 128), that requires another Letter, and a different pen to describe—the war, or hell of fires ! where the grass is seven or eight feet high, as is often the case for many miles together, on the Missouri bottoms; and the flames are driven forward by the hurricanes, which often sweep over the vast prairies of this denuded country. There are many of these meadows on the Missouri, the Platte, and the Arkansas, of many miles in breadth, which are perfectly level, with a waving grass, so high, that we are obliged to stand erect in our stirrups, in order to look over its waving tops; as we are riding through it. The fire in these, before such a wind, travels at an immense and frightful rate, and often destroys, on their fleetest horses, parties of Indians, who are so unlucky as to be overtaken by it; not that it travels as fast as a horse at full speed, but that the high grass is filled with wild pea-vines and other impediments, which render it necessary for the rider to guide his horse in the zig-zag paths of the deers and buffaloes, retarding his progress, until he is overtaken by the dense column of smoke that is swept before the fire— alarming the horse, which stops and stands terrified and immutable, till the burning grass which is wafted in the wind, falls about him, kindling up in a moment a thousand new fires, which are instantly wrapped in the swelling flood of smoke that is moving on like a black thunder-cloud, rolling on the earth, with its lightning’s glare, and its thunder rumbling as it goes. * % % rae # # * * When Ba*tiste, and Bogard, and I, and Patrick Raymond (who Jike Bogard had been a free trapper in the Rocky Mountains), and Pah-me-o-ne-qua (the red thunder), our guide back from a neighbouring village, were jogging along on the summit of an elevated bluff, overlooking an immense valley of high grass, through which we were about to lay our course. id Cust * * * * # #* * ‘‘ Well, then, you say you have seen the prairies on fire*” Yes. ‘ You TO. EE. cide D