George Catlin

“If my life be spared, nothing shall stop me from visiting every nation of Indians on the Continent of North America.”

“The chase is the object for which a man's life is given.”

“I love a people who have always made me welcome to the best they had.”

“An Indian's dress of deer skins, which is wet a hundred times upon his back, dries soft; and his lodge also, which stands in the rains, and even through the severity of winter, is soft and comfortable.”

“I have, for many years, been of the opinion, and I believe that the world will eventually join me in the opinion, that the Native American is a noble human being.”

“There is no Indian so poor that he cannot throw a feast.”

“Man, in the simplicity and loftiness of his nature, unrestrained and unfettered by the disguises of art, is surely the most beautiful model for the painter.”

“The very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied.”

“The history and customs of such a people, preserved by pictorial illustration, are themes worthy of the lifetime of one man, and nothing short of the loss of my life shall prevent me from visiting their country and becoming their historian.”

“What a thrilling contemplation for the traveler of taste and of feeling, to think of the... countless tribes of the wild and untutored North!”