|
In 1839, Pennsylvanian lawyer turned adventurer, writer and artist George Catlin came to England and took up
a three-year lease on the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London. There he exhibited his Indian Gallery
consisting of nearly six hundred paintings of Native American subjects, together with the vast collection of native
artefacts and costumes which he had amassed over several years of travels among the western tribes. Catlin moved to
Liverpool in 1843 and shortly thereafter undertook a tour of the provinces.
Catlin�s Scottish venues in 1843 were:
The original complement of fourteen Ioways who came to Scotland with George Catlin in 1845. The child in the cradle
towards the left is Corsair, who died at Dundee. Holding him is his mother, O-kee-wee-me, who later died in
Paris. The man standing at the extreme right is No-ho-mun-ya, known in English as Roman Nose, who died at
Liverpool and was buried in a grave whose location has been forgotten.
Let it not be falsely imagined that Buffalo Bill Cody was
the only or even the first showman to exhibit parties of Native Americans in Great Britain for mass popular
entertainment.
| 6th, 7th, 11th - 14th April | Edinburgh | Waterloo Rooms |
| 18th - 21st April | Glasgow | City Hall |
| 22nd, 24th April | Paisley | Exchange Rooms |
| 25th - 28th April | Greenock | The Theatre |
The Ojibbeways departed when Mr Rankin, who had been responsible for bringing them to England, decided to terminate his arrangement with Catlin. Rankin continued for a time to exhibit them independently and they appeared in Edinburgh at the Waterloo Rooms, Regent Bridge, in July 1844.
These Ojibbeways were succeeded by a party of fourteen Ioways, and in January 1845 Catlin�s itinerary brought them over the border into Scotland. The towns and cities visited this time around were Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Perth, Edinburgh again, and finally Greenock, from whence the party sailed to Dublin.
Catlin�s own account is curiously lacking in detail, and it is an oddity of his style that he provides very few dates in the course of his narrative. A precise time-frame can however be reconstructed on the basis of contemporary newspaper reports and advertisements. Notice in particular that whereas Catlin�s own narrative places Glasgow between the second visit to Edinburgh and Greenock, which would have been perfectly logical, extraneous evidence clearly indicates that Glasgow was in fact the first of the 1845 Scottish venues.
The towns and cities in which Catlin and the Ioways appeared in 1845 were:
| 23rd - 25th, 27th - 29th, 31st January - 1st February | Glasgow | City Hall |
| 3rd, 5th, 6th February | Edinburgh | Music Hall |
| 7th (cancelled), 8th, 10th February | Dundee | Thistle Hall |
| 11th - 12th February | Perth | City Hall |
| 15th, 17th, 18th, 19th February | Edinburgh | Waterloo Rooms |
| 20th - 21st February | Greenock | The Theatre |
The Ioway performers enacted tableaux vivants in addition to a variety of songs and
dances.
In Glasgow, the medicine man Se-non-ti-yah (Blistered Feet) conceived a fascination with Glasgow University�s
Hunterian Museum, then located in the High Street, while the other Indians of the party were drawn to what
Catlin termed a �beautiful cemetery�1. This is surely a reference to the Necropolis, which had
been opened twelve years previously.
The scenes of desperate poverty encountered in Glasgow surpassed anything the Ioways had witnessed in any of the
towns and cities previously visited, and they adopted the practice of throwing pennies to the ragged apparitions
they passed in the course of their daily horse-drawn omnibus drives. Word quickly got out and gangs of beggars took
to hanging around their door in the hope of meeting them as they came out.
The Ioways bore the constant proselytising attentions of missionaries from the usual bewildering array of Christian
denominations with fortitude,but there were occasions when their patience wore thin. In Glasgow, a visit from a pair
of clergymen was received without enthusiasm and the remarks of the war chief, Neu-mon-ya (Walking Rain), if
correctly recorded by Catlin, represent a searing indictment of the Indian�s impressions of conditions witnessed in
Scotland�s largest city:
Catlin esteemed Edinburgh �the most beautiful city in the kingdom, if not one of the most beautiful in the world�3
and there, on 4th February 1845, the Ioways took time out for sight-seeing. The capital attractions
visited included Salisbury Crags, Arthur�s Seat, Holyrood House and the Castle, where
they duly inspected the crown of Robert the Bruce.
Shon-ta-yi-ga (Little Wolf) came to Scotland in 1845 with George Catlin. His son died in Dundee, and
his wife in Paris.
My friends - I am willing to talk with you if it can do any good to the hundreds and thousands of poor and hungry
people that we see in your streets every day when we ride out. We see hundreds of little children with their feet in
the snow, and we pity them, for we know they are hungry, and we give them money every time we pass by. In four days
we have given twenty dollars to hungry children - we give our money only to children. We are told that the fathers
of these children are in the houses where they sell fire-water, and are drunk, and in their words they every moment
abuse and insult the Great Spirit. You talk about sending black-coats among the Indians: now we have no such poor
children among us; we have no such drunkards, or people who abuse the Great Spirit. Indians dare not do so. They
pray to the Great Spirit, and he is kind to them. Now we think it would be better for your teachers all to stay at
home, and go to work right here in your own streets, where all your good work is wanted. This is my advice. I would
rather not say any more.2
A baby boy aged eight months and named Corsair (after the steamer on which he was born, while sailing on the
Ohio river) died on 8th February 1845, shortly after the Ioways arrived at Dundee on board the steamer
from Edinburgh. After appropriate tribal ceremonials, the child was sent for burial at Westgate Hill
Cemetery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, under the direction of the Society of Friends or Quakers, a religious
organisation which had come to enjoy the confidence and esteem of the Ioways during the course of their British
sojourn. The cemetery, which then stood on the outskirts of the city, has since been allowed to fall into a state of
sad disrepair. If the grave was ever marked, the inscription would appear to have been worn away with time but its
location is preserved with some precision in the records of Newcastle City Council. The funeral was conducted on
12th February 1845.
Westgate Hill Cemetery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
During the visit to Perth, Catlin and party received an invitation from Sir William Drummond Stewart to visit him at Murthly Castle, which Catlin, with his characteristic inattention to detail, refers to as Merthyl Castle. Catlin�s busy schedule, however, compelled him regretfully to decline.
The Indians were further reduced in number when one of the men died at Liverpool. Corsair�s mother subsequently succumbed to tuberculosis in Paris, and was buried at Montmartre. The eleven survivors now lost heart and decided to go home.
Twelve of the Ioways with Mr G. H. C. Melody, their conductor, and Jeffrey Doraway, their interpreter
The second party of Ojibbeways which quickly succeeded the departed Ioways suffered similar reverses and three of their number, the only full bloods in the party, died of smallpox. A horrified Catlin - who had recently been bereft of his wife and was shortly to lose his youngest child, a little boy of three and a half years also named George - urged his Indian charges to return home immediately. They unwisely disregarded this advice, and continued to tour on their own account. Further deaths were to follow.
The head man of the party, whose native name is variously rendered as Mangwadaus or Maun-gua-daus (second from left in above group photo), was otherwise known as George Henry. He gave a description of his adventures, published in Boston in 1848, entitled An Account of the Chippewa Indians, who have been Travelling among the Whites, in the United States, England, Ireland, Scotland, France and Belgium; with very interesting Incidents in Relation to the General Characteristics of the English, Irish, Scotch, French, and Americans, with Regard to their Hospitality, Peculiarities, Etc. He lost a son in Edinburgh on 4th April, followed by a daughter and further son in Glasgow on 7th and 12th May 1847. These deaths are recorded in the Society of Friends� Digest of Births, Marriages and Burials (held at New Register House, Edinburgh), which records that all three were interred in Edinburgh, although the precise location is not entered. However, the small Quaker cemetery on the Pleasance, in use from 1820 until 1876, is most probably indicated.
Dumbarton Rock from Langbank, 29th July 2010
A few days more, the incidents of which I need not name, finished our visit to the city of Glasgow; and an hour or more by the railway, along the banks of the beautiful Clyde, and passing Dumbarton Castle, landed us in the snug little town of Greenock, from which we were to take steamer to Dublin.4
Footnotes:
1 George Catlin, Adventures Of The Ojibbeway And Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium: Being Notes Of Eight Years Travels And Residence in Europe, in two volumes, Vol. II, published by the author, 1852, Kessinger reprint, p. 173
2 Ibid, p. 176
3 Ibid, p. 163
4 Ibid, p. 177. Note incidentally that Catlin�s recollection of the sequence of events is wrong. The visit to Greenock with the Ioways directly followed the second Edinburgh sojourn of the 1845 tour. Glasgow had been the first venue on the tour.
|